Are You A Gem?
by fishstic
Summary: Elsa and Anna decided to take a vacation in beach city, and after Anna convinced Elsa to 'do the magic' and build a snowman for her in the middle of summer they met Steven Universe, who told them he and his friends were magic too. This is going to be quite an interesting summer.
1. Chapter 1

"Come on Elsa, just do the magic!" Anna was practically bouncing in her spot. They'd come to Beach City for vacation but Anna still thought that the most fun thing in the world was Elsa's magic.

"Alright Anna, but only because no one's around to see it," Elsa said with a smile and stood up. She didn't care if people back in Arendelle saw her do magic anymore, they were used to it, and even enjoyed it. But she had no way of knowing how people elsewhere would react.

Elsa stood with and held up her hand. She concentrated for a moment then waved that hand and watched happily as Anna wiggled in place and squealed happily like she did when they were kids watching the snowflakes appear and vanish.

"Build a snowman Elsa, please," Anna said flashing her best puppy dog eyes at Elsa.

"Alright, here goes," Elsa said waving her hand again, and the snowflakes swirled over the sand of the beach and started piling up in a swirl of brilliant blue and became a snowman, not a living one like Olaf, they left him at home with Kristoff, but a snowman nonetheless and that made Anna very happy.

"I love you," Anna said bouncing over and hugging Elsa.

"I love you too Anna," Elsa said hugging her back.

"That was awesome!" a boy's voice cut into their private reverie and disturbed the peace they'd created. The snowman collapsed, a physical show of Elsa's shock that someone had seen them.

They both turned and looked at the boy. He was probably at most ten years old and had curly black hair. He was wearing a red t-shirt with a gold star on it and jean shorts and pink sandals.

"Who are you?" Elsa asked fearfully.

"My name's Steven. Who're you? I've never seen you around here before," the boy said with a smile.

"My name is Elsa, and this is my girlfriend Anna," Elsa said pointing first at herself then to Anna.

"You're magic," Steven said with a very pleased look on his face. "That's cool. I'm magic too. So are my friends."

"You're magic?" Elsa asked in disbelief. "Show me."

"I don't know, the Gems don't like me using my magic if I'm not in danger."

"Gems?" _Interesting nickname_ , Elsa thought.

"Yeah my friends, the Crystal Gems. Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl."

"Can we meet them?" Elsa asked. The nickname made more sense knowing that they were all named after gemstones. She smiled at him. "I'm sure they don't want you talking to strangers so it's probably best if we meet them, then we won't be strangers." She was mostly curious that this boy seemed to be unafraid of her and she wanted to meet the people he called friends.

"I don't know, the Gems aren't very good with new people," Steven said. Last time the gems met a new person didn't end very well. Garnet ended up unfused and Lapis ended up stuck on the bottom of the ocean for well over a week, that was not fun for any of them.

"Aww please," Anna said still kind of bouncing. She loved meeting new people and these 'Crystal Gems' sounded amazing, plus they were magic, like Elsa.

"Well…Okay," Steven said happily, affected by Anna's bouncy happiness, and turned and pointed to his house, the shack in front of the intricately carved cliff face. "That's where I live, they'll be there. Follow me."

"Okay,"Elsa said with a smile.

He smiled and began running to the house. "Betcha can't beat me."

Elsa and Anna looked at each other curiously then a chuckling Anna said, "Race ya!" and took off after Steven.

"Oh you're on," Elsa said and raced after them.

Anna arrived at the little shack first, then Steven, then Elsa.

"You're fast," Steven said to Anna. "That's pretty cool."

"Aww, thanks," Anna said smiling and slightly blushing at the compliment.

Steven smiled and opened the screen door and let them into the shack. "Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl! Come meet my new friends!"

"Steven, you don't need to yell," Pearl said looking up from the newspaper she was reading, or at least acting like she was reading.

"We're already in here." Garnet said. She held out her arms for Steven to give her a hug.

Steven smiled and ran over to the three ladies sitting on the couch. Elsa stopped in the door not quite sure what she had expected but sure that what she saw wasn't it.

Sitting on the couch were three women. The one who'd held out her arms for Steven was tall from what Elsa could see with broad shoulders and a strangely square afro. She wore some pretty nice shades, a jumpsuit with three half-stars across the chest that went from a dark pink to a very light pink in color, and rounded shoulders, probably padded, the rest of the suit was half a purple-ish blue color and the other half maroon. _Was it a trick of the light or was her skin really that reddish color_ , Elsa thought to herself.

The woman next to her reading the paper was shorter than the first by only a few inches, with a peach colored pixie cut. She had a rather large white oval pearl on her forehead and was wearing yellow shorts, and from what Elsa could see a light blue shirt with a dark blue sash tied around her waist. Elsa wondered if the pearl on her head was real.

The last one playing with one of Steven's toys was only a little taller than him and her skin was oddly purple, though that may be the light. Her hair was long and even whiter than Elsa's. She was wearing a black tunic with grey leggings underneath that had black stars on the knees, and white boots.

Anna smiled and waved at the ladies not really paying much attention to how they looked used to strange looking people and talking snowmen, then noticing the fridge said, "Steven, is it alright if I make some sandwiches? Are you hungry?"

"That's fine, I could go for a sandwich." Steven nodded.

"Oooh make me one!" Amethyst said jumping up excitedly.

"Alright," Anna said with a nod and ran over to the fridge.

"Elsa are you okay?" Steven asked walking back over to her and taking her hand to bring her inside so she wasn't just standing in the door anymore.

"Yeah I-I just..." Elsa stammered quickly thinking it would be rude to tell the boy she wasn't expecting his friends to be so different.

"Elsa's not very good at meeting new people," Anna said from the fridge.

"That's true," Elsa said glad for the save and the perfectly true and reasonable excuse for her nervous stammering.

"It's okay," Pearl said quickly. "We're not people."

"We're Gems," Garnet added.

"That's Garnet," Steven said pointing to her, the tallest one. "And Pearl," he pointed to the woman next to her. "And Amethyst," he pointed to one who was still standing up excited about the prospective sandwich.

"Are they really magic?" Elsa asked, trying to hide her disbelief. She'd never met someone else with magic before that wasn't faking and here he was claiming that there were four magic people in one house.

"Steven how much did you tell her?" Pearl asked putting her paper down.

"Just that you guys are magic and I am too," Steven said. "It's okay, she can do magic too."

"Really?" Pearl looked to Garnet. "I've never heard of an Elsa gem before."

"I'm not a gem, I'm a person," Elsa said in protest. "A human."

"But humans can't do magic," Pearl said shaking her head. "Can they?"

Garnet simply shrugged. "Instead of making assumptions we should just see. Would you mind showing us?"

"Show them Elsa, I'm sure they'll love it," Anna said looking through the refrigerator for things to make the perfect sandwich.

"Please," Steven said his puppy eyes almost rivaling Anna's.

"Alright," Elsa said with a smile and waved her hand to reform the snowman that had collapsed on the beach here in the shack.

"Awesome!" Steven said running over to it. "Does it move?"

"Don't be ridiculous Steven," Pearl said standing up and walking over to it. "It's a snowman, they don't move."

Anna walked over with a sandwich she'd made for Steven and handed it to him while whispering to Elsa, "We probably shouldn't mention Olaf then, should we?"

Elsa shook her head a little. "Olaf should remain our secret in Arendelle where we left him," Elsa whispered back.

"Can you control water, or just ice?" Pearl asked when Elsa and Anna had stopped whispering to each other.

Elsa frowned. "I have no idea. I've never tried to control water before."

"I bet Lapis could teach you, she's great at that," Steven said taking the sandwich from Anna.

"Lapis?" Elsa asked confused. _Was that another of his friends? Why didn't he mention them the first time?_

"Yeah, Lapis Lazuli. She can control water," Steven said smiling.

"I've never met her," Elsa said carefully. Not knowing for sure if this was some kind of test, if maybe he thought she already knew Lapis or at least about Lapis. _He sure does have a lot of friends named after gemstones._

"She should be back soon," Pearl said, moving to sit back down on the couch.

"Where is she?" Steven asked.

"Surfing with Connie."

"Aw what? And they didn't invite me?" Steven said his disappointment clear as he ran over to look out the window and see if he could see either of them out on the water.

Garnet smiled. "You don't know how to surf Steven."

"Yeah, but they still could have invited me," Steven said with a sigh as he walked back over to Elsa from the door.

Anna smiled and went back to the fridge. "Who's Connie? She your girlfriend?"

"No..." Steven said biting his lip and blushing.

"But Steven, she is your friend and she is a girl," Pearl said contemplatively tapping her chin with her finger. "Wouldn't that logically make her your girlfriend?"

"It doesn't work like that Pearl," Steven said still blushing.

"I don't understand," Pearl said, extremely confused. "Then how does it work?"

"Connie's not my girlfriend the way that Anna means it," Steven said.

"How does she mean it?"

Steven groaned trying to think of words, he didn't really understand himself but got an idea and simply pointed at Garnet. "Anna means it like Ruby and Sapphire are girlfriends."

Garnet simply shrugged. It was hard for anyone to be girlfriends like Ruby and Sapphire, after all they made Garnet herself out of pure love. By human standards, they were pretty much married.

"Aw come on Steven," Amethyst said with a chuckle. "You and Connie are as much in love as Ruby and Sapphire, or Pearl was with your mom!"

"Amethyst!" Pearl snapped.

"You know it's true!"

Amethyst stuck out her tongue and ran away from Pearl who started chasing her.

Garnet shrugged then stood up and walked over to Steven and Elsa. "Steven and Connie aren't dating, they're a little young for that."

"Yeah," Steven said with a nod.

"Makes sense." Elsa nodded. "Anna and I were just friends for a long time before we became girlfriends."

Anna walked over with another sandwich that she was eating. "Amethyst when you're done being chased by Pearl, your sandwich is on the counter."

"Thanks yo," Amethyst said running over to take it with Pearl still chasing her.

Anna was munching on her sandwich looking out to the beach attempting to see if she could spot anyone who might be Connie or Lapis when she noticed something above the door. A massive painting. "Hey who's that?" she asked pointing up at the painting. "She's pretty."

Amethyst and Pearl stopped running and looked over to them. Pearl audibly gasped and Amethyst just stared like she hadn't thought either of Steven's friends would ask about Rose so soon.

"That's Rose Quartz," Garnet said. "Steven's mother."

"Is she magic too?" Anna asked not thinking about that it might be hard for them to talk about her, after all in her mind it was just as likely that she was out of the house as that she wasn't around anymore.

"Yes. She was," Garnet said in response.

"What happened?" Anna asked curious to know and wondering slightly if there was some way she might be able to help.

"She gave up her physical form to bring Steven into the world," Garnet said.

Anna nodded contemplatively, she knew what that meant in human terms and while the gems didn't seem to be exactly human she assumed that it was roughly the same thing. "That's pretty rough. My mom did that too in a way," she said her voice not giving any indication of the hurt that thinking about it brought up nor the regret she had for asking in the first place. "So Steven, if you ever want to talk to someone who sort of knows what it's like, you can talk to me."

"So how long are you two going to be in town?" Steven asked, his own way of saying he'd consider that.

"Humans can do that?" Pearl asked.

"My mom died. Steven's mom is still alive," Anna said, her voice still not giving an indication of the emotional pain she felt, then took another bite of her sandwich. "Elsa you explain, you're the smart one," she mumbled with her mouth full.

"Rose Quartz only gave up her form. Her consciousness and personality, and probably powers too, are still alive within Steven himself. Anna's mom died, she's no longer around in any way other than memories," Elsa said with the air of a practiced speech even though the first part was off the top of her head and she wasn't even sure if it was true, but the way Garnet had said 'physical form' made it seem extremely likely, unless that was just a polite way of saying she died.

"Oh...OH," Pearl gasped as she understood what Elsa was saying. She stammered an apology quickly, "I am so sorry, I had no idea."

"Wow, are you guys like not from Earth or something?" Anna asked having finished her sandwich. "Death is a fact of human life and everyone but maybe little kids understand that sometimes people die during childbirth." The Gems looked to her with a sort of shocked expression on their face that she figured out that they weren't from Earth, even though it was rather obvious. "What? What'd I say?"

"That's just it," Steven said.

"We're not from Earth," Garnet said. "Though as long as we've been here we probably should have figured that bit about humans out."

"Oh, cool so you guys are like aliens or something," Anna said and smiled. "That's so..."

The Gems mostly Steven looked really worried about what Anna was getting ready to say.

"Awesome!" Anna finished dramatically bouncing in her spot. "Do you like have a spaceship or something? How'd you get here? How long have you been here? What's it like living among humans? Are you the only ones? If you've been here long enough does that mean you've seen all of human history?"

"Anna," Elsa said placing a hand on her girlfriend's shoulder to stop her bouncing. "I'm not sure the Gems want us asking all those questions about them. I'm sure they'd much prefer us not prying into the situation."

"But..." Anna said flashing Elsa her puppy dog eyes again. "I just want to know things. Like if they know what happened to Amelia Earhart."

"Anna what makes you so sure they would know?" Elsa said. If her girlfriend was about to start with the alien abduction conspiracies again then she was prepared to try to distract her somehow.

"Who's Amelia Earhart?" Steven asked.

"See?" Elsa said as though that proved her point more than anything.

"Because they're aliens and if the theories are right, Amelia Earhart was abducted by aliens," Anna said with a 'well duh' expression on her face.

"Conspiracy theories, really Anna?" Elsa said exasperated, she tried to think of something to say to Anna that would distract her.

"You should go talk to Ronaldo," Steven said before Pearl could start speaking about how they weren't involved in any kind of abductions and before Elsa could think of anything to distract Anna with. "He knows everything about conspiracy theories."

"Oooh." Anna's eyes lit up like a kid at a candy store. "Where can I find him?"

"In the lighthouse on top of the cliff," Steven said with a smile. "Or at the Fry shop, that's where he works."

"Okay, I'm gonna go talk to him," Anna said with a smile. "See you later Elsa, bye Steven and Gems." She kissed Elsa's cheek then ran out the door to go find this Ronaldo and talk to him about conspiracy theories.

"What...What just happened?" Pearl asked walking up to them.

"I was going to ask the same thing," Elsa said sharing Pearl's confused look.

"I sent her to go talk to Ronaldo, she doesn't want the facts, she wants 'the truth'," Steven said with a dramatic wave of his hands.

"You're pretty smart," Elsa said with a smile. Smart was something she always appreciated especially when Anna got weird ideas.

"Well," Steven said looking to Garnet and Pearl. "I have great teachers." Then he smiled at Elsa. "So who is Amelia Earhart anyway?"

"She was a pilot who disappeared flying over the ocean, no one knows what happened. Conspiracy theorists say she was either abducted by aliens or crashed her plane and ran off with her co-pilot. The more likely thing is she was shot down by soldiers who thought she was their enemy," Elsa said smiling, happy to help teach him a little of human history.

"Oh, if she crashed in the ocean, then Lapis might know where her plane is," Steven said with a smile.

"Steven, do you really want Lapis going back to the bottom of the ocean?" Pearl asked kneeling down to be closer to his height.

Steven thought about this for a moment while Elsa just stood their confused about how anyone could go to the bottom of the ocean. "No," he said seriously. "But maybe she already knows. There's no harm in asking and it's okay if she doesn't know. Right Elsa?"

Elsa nodded. "Right. Humans don't know what happened so it's okay if a gem doesn't know either." Then her curiosity got the better of her. "How'd Lapis get to the bottom of the ocean and come back? If it's okay to ask I mean. Isn't the ocean like super deep and extremely heavy?"

"Well yes it is," Pearl said with a nod. "But Gems are stronger and more durable than humans are, and Lapis is practically made of the ocean."

"Pearl? I'm not sure that's right," Steven said.

"Gems are more resistant to things like pressure and airlessness than humans," Pearl said. "You know that Steven."

"I meant Lapis being practically made of ocean," Steven said. "I don't think it works like that."

"It doesn't," Amethyst said in agreement and happy to have a chance to say that Pearl was wrong. "You can't make a Gem out of water." She stopped for a second then looked to Garnet. "Can you?"

"I don't know," Garnet said. "Perhaps not Earth's water, she is a homeworld Gem though."

"Well in non-sentient gemstones," Elsa said proud to know something that might add to the conversation, "lapis lazuli is a stone, not gem, made from extreme heat or pressure. It's possible, though unlikely, for it to be made at the bottom of the ocean from pressure or at a hydrothermal vent down there from the heat. Generally lapis lazuli is found in limestone." She thought for a second looking back in her memories to when she researched the different stones used in her mother's jewelry to find the perfect gift for Anna. She remembered the wikipedia article saying that, "Lapis lazuli is commercially synthesized or simulated by the Gilson process, which is used to make artificial ultramarine and hydrous zinc phosphates."

Elsa looked to the gems who seemed rather surprised that she knew all that about the non sentient version of their friend Lapis. "Sorry?" she said sheepishly. "I read a lot."

"That's amazing," Steven said jumping up. "Tell me about Garnet."

"Well, garnet is a more complicated gem, there's many types and many colors and it's really scientific in explanation. It used to be used as a diamond substitute."

"Oh..." Steven frowned that wasn't nearly as interesting as hearing about Lapis.

"Ooh tell me about me," Amethyst said.

"That's easier. Amethyst is a variety of quartz that's name means 'not intoxicated' in Ancient Greek. It owe its purple color to irradiation, iron impurities, and the presence of other trace elements. The Greeks believed amethyst gems could prevent intoxication, while medieval European soldiers wore amethyst amulets as protection in battle in the belief that amethysts heal people and keep them cool-headed," Elsa said. She was proud of her knowledge even if it came from reading the wikipedia articles too much. "Synthetic amethyst is produced by gamma-ray, x-ray or electron beam irradiation of clear quartz which has been first doped with ferric impurities. On exposure to heat, the irradiation effects can be partially cancelled and amethyst generally becomes yellow or even green, and much of the citrine, cairngorm, or yellow quartz of jewelry is said to be merely "burnt amethyst"."

"Tell me something more interesting," Amethyst said, "that's all boring and scientific."

"The Greek word "amethystos" may be translated as "not drunken". Amethyst was considered to be a strong antidote against drunkenness, which is why wine goblets were often carved from it. In his poem "L'Amethyste, ou les Amours de Bacchus et d'Amethyste" (Amethyst or the loves of Bacchus and Amethyste), the French poet Remy Belleau invented a myth in which Bacchus, the god of intoxication, of wine, and grapes was pursuing a maiden named Amethyste, who refused his affections. Amethyste prayed to the gods to remain chaste, a prayer which the chaste goddess Diana answered, transforming her into a white stone. Humbled by Amethyste's desire to remain chaste, Bacchus poured wine over the stone as an offering, dyeing the crystals purple.

"Variations of the story include that Dionysus had been insulted by a mortal and swore to slay the next mortal who crossed his path, creating fierce tigers to carry out his wrath. The mortal turned out to be a beautiful young woman, Amethystos, who was on her way to pay tribute to Artemis. Her life was spared by Artemis, who transformed the maiden into a statue of pure crystalline quartz to protect her from the brutal claws. Dionysus wept tears of wine in remorse for his action at the sight of the beautiful statue. The god's tears then stained the quartz purple.

"This myth and its variations are not found in classical sources. Although the titan Rhea does present Dionysus with an amethyst stone to preserve the wine-drinker's sanity in historical text," Elsa said quoting the things she read on wikipedia about amethyst in mythology thinking that was the more interesting thing Amethyst wanted to hear.

"That's so awesome," Amethyst said moving over to jump up on the couch excitedly.

"Amethyst don't jump on the couch," Pearl said walking over to her. "Amethyst stop."

"What about my mom?" Steven said. "Tell me about Rose Quartz that aren't sentient, whatever that means."

"Let me see your gem," Elsa said thinking that the gem in the painting was too dark to be rose quartz. It looked more like a diamond.

"Alright." Steven said lifting his shirt a little to reveal the gem where his belly button would be. "It's my mom's gem."

"Are you all sure she was Quartz? It's too dark. Non sentient rose quartz does not get this dark, in fact the more it's exposed to light the lighter it gets," she said in the interest of figuring out which thing would be more interesting to talk about, the fact that pink or red diamonds were really hard to come by or that quartz came in a rainbow of colors and amethyst was technically a type of quartz too.

"If she wasn't Quartz what do you think she could have been?" Pearl asked carefully.

"Diamond," Elsa said without hesitation. "Rose diamonds are this color and don't fade in the light." Then she shrugged. "Maybe because she was a living gem that's why her gem is darker. I don't actually know all that much about the different kinds of quartz, just the color names and how dark they could be. I learned it all when I was researching the stuff in my mom's jewelry box. My mom didn't have much quartz in that box and none of it could talk."

"That's an interesting theory," Pearl said neither confirming nor denying it.

"I suppose so," Elsa said not knowing why it really mattered, she just needed to know what to tell Steven about the non living versions of his mom. "In the end it doesn't really matter either way does it? No matter which your mom was the nonliving versions of her are almost just as pretty as her. Diamonds that are pink or red in color are hard to come across, valuable, and highly beautiful. Quartz comes in a rainbow of colors including pink and purple. Purple quartz is commonly known as amethyst."

"You're really smart," Steven said unsure why Pearl seemed concerned that Elsa thought his mom was a diamond, not connecting the dots to Yellow Diamond and the homeworld. "I think you would like Connie."

"Well you'll just have to introduce me when she comes back," Elsa said smiling. "For now, is that a Super Nintendo I see?" she asked pointing up at the game system attached to the TV.

"It is," Steven said excitedly. "Do you want to play? We could play Super Mario Kart!"

"Steven, you only have one controller," Pearl said still trying to get Amethyst to stop jumping on the couch now that the topic of diamonds had been dropped.

"Oh yeah." He looked around the room trying to find something they could do until Connie and Lapis came back. "Do you read?"

"Pretty much all the time," Elsa said with a smile.

"I have books," Steven said running up the stairs and getting a couple off his nightstand including _The Unfamiliar Familiar_. "Have you ever read The Spirit Morph Saga? Connie let me borrow them and I haven't given them back yet."

"I haven't actually," Elsa said with a smile. "Want to tell me about them?"

Steven smiled and started telling Elsa all about the series.

While he was doing that Garnet walked over and sat down on the couch and Amethyst plopped down beside her. Pearl sighed and sat down on Garnet's other side.

"Garnet, should we be concerned that Steven's made friends with a stranger who's probably at least twice his age?" Pearl asked quietly not wanting Steven to overhear and think she didn't trust him.

Garnet shook her head. "I trust her."


	2. Chapter 2

"Trust her?" Pearl asked quietly, not convinced that it wasn't weird in some way. "You just met her." Then with an even quieter, harsher whisper added, "Plus she thinks Rose was a diamond."

"I trust her," Garnet replied her tone left no real room for arguing on why she trusted her. "Besides that, Steven is friends with plenty of people in town that are at least ten years older than him."

"Well..." Pearl began then stopped, unable to come up with a logical counter to that. "Do you think Steven can really get Lapis to try to teach her to control water?"

"Steven can get practically anything he wants," Garnet said. "I think she can do it. And I think Lapis is the perfect teacher for her. They are," she paused for a moment looking for the right word, "similar."

"Similar?" Amethyst chuckled. "They could be the same person if Elsa wasn't human."

"Lapis is less up front with her knowledge," Garnet said then shrugged. "They'd make a good team."

"I suppose," Pearl said glancing at Steven and Elsa who were now sitting on the stairs reading the book aloud to each other. "I think there's something odd about this."

"Ah relax P," Amethyst said. "So, Steven made friends with a tourist. It's not the first time."

"It's the first time that the tourist has been magic," Pearl pointed out.

"Does that matter?" Amethyst asked. "You say that like it's a bad thing."

"It's just really strange," Pearl said with a small nod.

"It is a bit strange," Garnet said, "but this place does attract strange." There was a thought in her head, mostly from Ruby wondering if maybe Steven wasn't the only half gem in existence. "Elsa," she said and waited for Elsa too look up from the book, which didn't take long. "How did you get your magic?"

"I was born with it," Elsa said plainly, that after all was all she really knew about it.

"Did anyone else in your family have magic?"

"I have no idea," she said with a shrug glancing at the book for a moment then looking back to Garnet. "There were rumors that my grandmother could speak to magical beings in her dreams. She made paintings of some of the beings she talked to and fantastic places she saw while talking to them."

"Paintings? Do you have any pictures of them?" Pearl asked thinking if any of it was Gem related the paintings would show it.

Elsa reached in her pocket and pulled out her phone. "I do, I took pictures of each one of them. They're one of a kind." She flipped through the pictures on her phone until she came across one of them, her second favorite called 'Island Visitation'. It was a painting of a serene island with beautiful trees and flowers and a strange circular platform that looked like it was made out of quartz. The pad was lit up with a blue light beam coming out of it and in that beam was the silhouette of a person. She got up and walked over to the Gems and showed them.

"My grandmother was an amazing artist and I never understood why she didn't sell any of them," Elsa said as the Gems looked at the painting. She didn't notice that they all seemed to recognize the place in the painting or that Pearl subtly glanced over to the platform in the back area of the shack that was almost identical to the one in the painting.

"That's a beautiful painting," Garnet said deciding not to mention the Gem connection yet. "Can we see more?"

"This next one is my absolute favorite," Elsa said turning her phone around and flipping over to the picture of the painting 'Blue Angel'. The background of the painting was a beautiful starry night sky and in the foreground was a beautiful woman with skin a beautiful ultramarine color and a cerulean pixie cut. She was wearing a cobalt blue crop dress with a navy blue diamond on the chest that connected the neck to the waist and tied at the back of the neck with a ribbon. She was held aloft by a pair of beautiful wings that appeared to be made of pure water. She then turned the phone back around and showed them.

Pearl nearly screamed. At that same moment Lapis and Connie walked through the door laughing about falling off the surfboard. And all the Crystal Gems, except Steven who was still reading, looked like they'd just seen a ghost.

"Hey, are you guys alright?" Lapis asked, not laughing anymore. "I'm sure we don't look all that much like we almost drowned."

"It's Lapis," Pearl gasped not looking away from the painting yet.

"Of course it's me. Who were you expecting?" Lapis said walking over. She looked nearly identical to the her portrait, just wearing a crop top and knee length skirt now instead of a dress.

"No, in the painting. It's you," Pearl said.

Elsa turned the phone around and showed Lapis who was standing next to her now.

"That it is. It's pretty good. Who painted it?" Lapis said only slightly disturbed by it. There weren't any humans around to paint her with anything that would last when she last was out of the mirror, and that was the last time she'd worn that outfit.

"My grandmother," Elsa said finally actually looking at Lapis and she nearly dropped her phone. She really was the angel from the painting.

"Now you look like you've seen a ghost," Lapis said. "I'm Lapis Lazuli and I am not a ghost. Please stop looking at me like I am."

Elsa nodded and smiled at her. "I'm Elsa. I'm sorry for staring, you're just really pretty."

"Don't you have a girlfriend?" Amethyst said almost chuckling.

"Doesn't mean I can't tell someone the truth when I think they're pretty. No one stops being pretty just because I'm dating someone else," Elsa said truthfully without any shame.

Lapis blushed slightly, her cheeks turning a darker blue color. "Thank you." She wasn't sure what else to say. Then remembered how long it had been since she'd looked like the painting in its exactness. "How old was your grandmother when she painted that?"

"That one she painted when she twenty five years old. That would have been 75 years ago," Elsa said quickly doing the math in her head.

Lapis gasped and shook her head. "That's not possible. She couldn't possibly have ever seen me, on purpose or by accident. I was trapped in that stupid mirror for over 4000 years, and I just got out of it a few months ago thanks to Steven."

"She didn't paint things she saw when she was awake," Elsa said for explanation. "She painted what she saw in her dreams." She quickly flipped to another painting on her phone, this one of two girls dancing on a beach at sunset. They were both short, one with a skyblue dress and long voluminous hair and the other had similar color hair to Garnet and a similar skintone too, while the girl in the dress' skintone looked closer to Lapis'. The mini-Garnet looking one was wearing a red headband a light red and maroon tank top, maroon shorts and violet-red boots. You could practically feel the love between the two of them despite it being just a painting.

She showed them all the painting. Lapis was a little confused, but Pearl and Amethyst seemed sort of shocked in an almost scandalized way. Then they looked to Garnet, who was grinning from ear to ear. She looked so pleased by the painting that Elsa wondered if maybe she could see something in it that she couldn't.

"What would I have to do to get that painting from you?" Garnet asked. "It's my favorite."

"Do you really like it that much?" Elsa asked confused. It was a beautiful painting, but not any more so than any of the rest of them, at least not to her. But then, she didn't know the Gems in the painting or what connection they had to Garnet.

"I do."

"I could call my aunt, she has the painting now and ask if she'd be willing to let me have it," Elsa said with a smile. "You wouldn't have to do anything. Art belongs with the people who appreciate it most. For this painting I think that's you, and so you should have it."

"Who has the painting of Lapis?" Pearl asked curiously, wondering if it was with someone who truly appreciated it.

"I do actually," Elsa said with a soft smile. "It hangs on the wall beside my bed, so I see it every night when I go to sleep and every morning when I wake up. My grandmother told me when I was little that the painting would protect me from nightmares and monsters, because it was painted with ultramarine, a pigment made from nonliving lapis lazuli. Many Earth cultures believe that lapis lazuli is a stone that represents truth and friendship."

"Truth and friendship," Lapis said with a small smile. "I can believe that."

"Lapis is back!" Steven cried dropping his book and ran over to hug her. He'd only just noticed because the book was really good. Then he ran over and hugged Connie who was standing by the door and had picked up one of the books he'd brought down for Elsa to read. "Connie's back too!"

"Hi, Steven," Connie and Lapis both said with a chuckle. "Did you have fun today?"

"You guys went surfing without me," Steven half whined.

"You made a new friend without us," Connie said smiling. "It couldn't have been all that bad to not come with us."

"Well," Steven said thinking about that. "I guess it wasn't. Elsa can do magic. She made that snowman." He pointed at the snowman that was still perfect despite the temperature being well above freezing.

"How is it still standing?" Lapis asked walking over to it and poking it. She hadn't noticed it at first because everyone was looking at her like she was a ghost. As far as she could see it was really made of real snow, and there was no logical explanation for why it was still standing.

"Magic," Elsa said with a shrug. "I tend not to question it."

"The one she made on the beach collapsed when I scared her," Steven said walking over to them. He wasn't sure how that would help, but he thought it was a good idea to point it out.

"You didn't scare me," Elsa said obviously lying. "I was surprised."

"That's the same thing," Steven said with a chuckle. "It's okay if you were scared."

"I wasn't scared," Elsa mumbled but smiled. "It's connected to my emotions. I accidentally froze a river once when I was terrified and running away from someone. It took me days to figure out how to fix that."

"Aww cool," Steven said with a smile. "What else can you do?"

"I can draw?" Elsa said, it was a question because she wasn't sure what he meant by that. "I can write and read? I have photographic memory. I can also sing pretty well, and play the flute."

"I meant with your magic, but that stuff is awesome too," Steven said bouncing a little where he was standing. "I can sing, so can my dad, he used to be a one man band. Connie can sing too. Actually we can all sing."

"Oh, with my magic. I can create snowstorms and blizzards if I'm terrified or angry enough," Elsa said thinking about it, she didn't think it was smart to tell them about her living snowmen, Olaf, Marshmallow and the snowgies. She had no idea what caused them to live and she couldn't really control what they did. "I can melt the snow and stop the storms. Oh and I can freeze water particles in the air or on objects, I think that's how my magic works for the most part, either that or by creating frozen water particles in the air. I don't know details. I can make places and things colder. And I can use ice as a decorative enhancer."

"As a what now?" Steven asked not sure what that last part meant.

"Decorative enhancer. I can use it to make the details and colors on clothing more noticeable," Elsa said waving her hand and smiling as the ice particles swirled around her then stuck to her t-shirt making the details of the words 'It's not summer without bees' and the flower and little cartoon bee on it along with the smaller words at the bottom, 'save the bees', pop. "It's really useful when my clothes start fading."

"That seems like a waste of magic," Pearl said. "An interesting ability though. Have you ever considered using your magic to help people?"

"Anna keeps asking me to," Elsa said rubbing her hands together nervously, "but I don't know if I can. I've never tried. I know if I'm not careful my magic can kill people, it has almost done that before."

"Why doesn't it melt?" Lapis asked once again poking the snowman. "Do you only do frozen water or can you do liquid water too?"

Elsa shrugged. "No idea, on either. What about you Lapis? Can you only control liquid water or can you handle the frozen kind too?"

Lapis shrugged too. "Let's find out."

She concentrated for a moment and focused on the water in the snowman and raised her hand above it, and smiled as it reformed into a snow Steven. "I guess I can. It's not that hard."

"Lapis, that was really..." Pearl began but stopped mid sentence trying to figure out if it was more impressive or melodramatic.

"Passive aggressive," Garnet finished for her.

"Well that wasn't exactly what I was thinking," Pearl said. "But it kind of was."

Lapis tilted her head and shrugged. "She asked a question and I answered. How is that passive aggressive? I'm not aggressive."

"Not the action, the comment that it's not hard," Garnet said. "That was passive aggressive."

"I didn't mean it to be," Lapis said looking down, "I was just stating my thoughts."

"It's alright Lapis," Elsa said moving over and putting a hand on her shoulder gently. "I didn't think it was passive aggressive. I'm actually really impressed."

Lapis smiled and blushed a little, super unused to anyone complimenting her other than Steven. "Thanks. I'm just not used to people, or gems. Sometimes I say things or do things that are a little awkward." She looked over to Connie. "I apologize again for accidentally knocking you off your surfboard."

"It's alright," Connie said with a smile. "I thought it was funny."

Steven smiled. "Maybe you can teach Elsa how to control water, Lapis."

"I don't know Steven, I'm not sure I'd make a very good teacher," Lapis said quietly. "I can try, but I'm not even sure exactly how I do it."

"See, same person," Amethyst whispered dramatically.

Lapis tilted her head a little, confused why she said that.

"Be quiet Amethyst," Pearl said.

"Anyways," Lapis said choosing to ignore them this time. "Our magic is not the same. She is human. I am a gem. Plus I can't make my own water except for my wings."

"If I may, I'm not sure I make my own ice," Elsa said.

"Same," Amethyst whispered again and this time Garnet shook her head. Amethyst frowned but didn't say anything else.

"Maybe we could take this talk outside," Elsa said glaring at Amethyst slightly. "There's plenty of water in the ocean."

Lapis shrugged. "I suppose so. There is a lot of water in the ocean. Not enough to make it to space, but a lot."

Elsa raised her eyebrows but didn't comment. "We don't have to right now, I mean. I'm going to be in town for a while, we could try any time."

Lapis nodded wondering if maybe Elsa was trying to make it her choice whether or not she tried to teach her to control water. "Do you want to learn?" she asked in an attempt to understand Elsa's reasoning for saying it didn't have to be now.

"Do you want to teach me?" Elsa countered. "If you don't want to teach me, then I don't want to learn."

"I don't know if I want to teach you if you don't even know if you want to learn or not," Lapis said. If this was a game of words she wasn't going to lose.

"Uhh, Lapis," Steven said confused and trying to keep up with this word fight. "Does that even make sense to you?"

"It makes perfect sense, Steven," Pearl said. "Lapis is saying she won't teach Elsa until Elsa admits that she does want to learn."

"Well..." Elsa tried to think of how to word the response. "Admit you want to teach me and I'll admit I want to learn."

"You just admitted you want to learn, Elsa," Lapis said with an air of triumph. "I'll teach you what I can."

Lapis smiled and walked over to the door then turned and looked back at the group, Steven still looked confused and Elsa looked like she didn't quite understand how she'd admitted she wanted to learn. Garnet looked a little pleased while Amethyst had gone back to trying to make Pearl mad. "Steven, Elsa are you two coming or not?"

"What about Connie?" Steven asked walking over to her with Elsa following looking like she was still trying to figure out how she admitted she wanted to learn.

"Connie can come too," Lapis said with a smile. "If she wants to."

"Cool!" Connie said and ran over to them. "Let's go."

Elsa simply followed them out the door trying to figure out exactly how she'd admitted to wanting to learn. Lapis watched Steven and Connie run down to the beach then leaned over and whispered to Elsa, "You admitted it in your wording. 'I'll admit I want to learn' instead of 'I'll admit if I want to learn.'

Elsa nodded, it finally making sense how she'd lost the word game. Then she and Lapis followed Steven and Connie down to the water. Elsa, Steven and Connie sat down on their knees a little away from the water while Lapis moved to stand in front of it.

"Controlling water is a simple matter, at least for me," Lapis said standing in front of them and looking at them smiling. She looked directly at Elsa. "In theory it shouldn't be all that difficult for you either. Ice is just frozen water. In theory, if you can control the frozen kind then you should be able to control the liquid kind too."

"In theory," Elsa said with a nod. Yes, in theory this was extremely sound. There was nothing, in theory, that stopped her from being able to control water, except maybe her own doubt. Lapis was right, water is just liquid ice. There was no reason she shouldn't be able to control it.

"There's a lot of theories out there, some of them true." Lapis said and moved to step back to where the tide was almost touching her feet. "There's a theory on Earth that 'gravity exists' and it's true, but why do humans call it a theory?"

Steven shrugged but Connie seemed excited and Elsa knew the answer. None of them said anything quite yet, waiting to see what kind of point Lapis was trying to make.

After a few seconds, Lapis realized they were waiting for her to say something and shook her head. "I don't know, I was hoping one of you did."

Connie spoke first, "In scientific term there isn't a theory that just says gravity exists. There's a law that's used to measure gravitational pull, and a theory for why gravity works."

"We call the theory 'The Theory of General Relativity' and it attempts to explain why objects attract each other, or repel them. The law is 'Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation' and is a scientific and mathematical formula used to quantitatively measure gravity's effects on a falling object. It measures the acceleration, speed, how long it falls, how much energy it has, how much energy is needed to pick it back up and some other things," Elsa said with a smile, pleased that her random researching could come in handy. She looked to Steven and Connie to see if they had anything to add. Steven looked thoroughly lost while Connie was looking very happy.

Lapis stood for a moment taking in that information. "That's actually really interesting." She thought about asking Elsa if she knew the formula but decided against it when she realized Elsa probably did know and would actually tell her instead of just saying she did.

"Alright," Lapis said with a smile. "If that theory is right, which it seems to be, then there's no reason our theory that you can control liquid water shouldn't be true as well."

Elsa nodded. "Show me how it's done."

Lapis smiled and nodded. "No problem, first you'll want to be close to the water that you're trying to control, then you'll want to concentrate on the water and think about what you want it to do and then it should do it. At least that's how it works for me."

She smiled and focused for a second on the water and imagined what she wanted it to do, then as she was thinking about it a hand made out of the water rose up and gave them a thumbs up. "And that's all it takes." It took less than a minute for that to happen.

"Uhh Lapis, don't you think that is a little too much for Elsa to attempt for a first try?" Steven asked.

Lapis shrugged. "I don't know how to do simple anymore, Steven. I'm a gem, I've never had to think about it or teach someone else how to do it."

Elsa nodded and smiled sympathetically. "It's okay. I had the same problem when I tried to teach Anna to remember things the way I do."

She stood up and walked to the edge of the water and tried focusing on the water and thought about making it simply rise up in a bubble, that seemed simple enough, However the water remained there just as still as it was before. Elsa sighed and tried again, and again. But the water didn't want to listen to her and she couldn't really feel the water the same way she could her ice.

"Elsa, do the hand thing," Steven said jumping up and waving his hand like Elsa had when she built the snowman inside. "Maybe that will help."

Elsa looked to him then nodded and looked back at the water, concentrating on it for a second and raising her hand in the movements she wanted the water to make. The water seemed to stop moving for a second then slowly a bubble of water rose up following Elsa's hand movement.

Elsa smiled happily and moved her hand slightly to get the bubble to move but out of the corner of her eye she noticed Connie fidgeting and lost her concentration and the bubble just sort of froze and shattered into tiny ice particles and fell into the water. "What's wrong Connie?"

Connie pointed at the clouds above them and said, "It's going to storm."

"Oh," Elsa said looking up. "You and Steven should probably go inside then."

"Will you two be okay out here?" Steven asked as Connie stood up. The idea of any of his friends being out in a storm really worried him, but he decided that they were grown up enough to know if it was safe for them or not.

"We'll come in when it starts raining, right Lapis?" Elsa said with a smile.

"Yeah," Lapis said with a nod.

"If you're sure," Steven said.

"We are," Elsa said looking to Lapis who nodded.

Steven and Connie headed back up to the shack. Lapis and Elsa watched until they were inside then turned back to the water.

"That was a really good job with the bubble," Lapis said. "I know humans and Gems are inherently very different creatures." She stared over the water wistfully and then looked at Elsa who just nodded encouragingly. "But sometimes I have to wonder why I never noticed before, we share a lot of the same things. The same universe, the same laws of physics, the same desires. And now that I can't leave, we share the same planet, the same air, the same ocean. We have a lot in common, despite our differences. We even share similar powers, at least you and I do."

Elsa smiled and gently placed a hand on Lapis' shoulder. "We do have a lot of similarities. Let's see if impressive water skills are one of them."

Lapis smiled and started to understand just a little more why Rose Quartz and the Crystal Gems cared so much about humans. Sometimes, she realized, the humans care back. "That sounds like a great idea."

Lapis and Elsa worked on Elsa's water skills for a while and after about ten minutes Elsa was able to make the water form a hand, albeit a lot smaller than the one Lapis made. They were having fun splashing each other with water and making the water hands wave at each other when a low rumble of thunder caught their attention. Elsa looked up to see if there was any indication that the rain was about to start but Lapis just sort of froze for a second.

Elsa turned to say that they should probably head inside because water conducted electricity and if lightning struck the ocean right now they'd be dead, but stopped short when she saw the look on Lapis' face.

"Lapis, are you alright?"

A louder crash of thunder rumbled across the sky and instinctively Lapis' wings extended to let her fly to safety. Except flying with wings made of water in a thunderstorm was probably the worst idea on the face of the Earth.

Elsa grabbed Lapis' hand quickly to keep her from flying away. "Don't, Lapis please. I understand if you're scared but you could get seriously hurt."

Lapis tried to pull away as another even louder crash of thunder sounded in the sky. Elsa simply pulled her closer, into a hug and sank down to her knees on the sand, pulling Lapis with her.

"Lapis, can you hear me?"

Lapis just kept trying to pull away, not sure why but she didn't realize it was only Elsa holding her, not Jasper. Almost as an extension of her instinct the water hand rose up again to try to knock Elsa/Jasper away from her and let her escape. But Elsa was just as quick with her ice and froze the water hand causing it to splash down into the ocean again.

"Lapis, please! Come back. It's just me. Elsa. I'm not going to hurt you."

"Let me go!" Lapis cried as another crash of thunder sounded and lightning flashed in the not so distant distance.

"No. Lapis, I'm not letting you fly in this storm!" Elsa held tight to her trying to fight against Lapis' instincts and keep her safe. At some point she realized that there was definitely something that she hadn't been told but it didn't seem to matter.

"Let go of me!" Lapis cried again when the next crash of thunder sounded more like an explosion than anything else.

"I will not!" Elsa yelled back. "I'm not letting you get hurt again! Just let me help you!"

Lapis froze for a moment, a few seconds' lapse in her struggle against who she was sure was Jasper. Except Jasper would never say that. 'Let me help you' wasn't even a sentence she thought Jasper was capable of making.

The lightning strikes were getting closer to the city and the beach, and Elsa was extremely worried. There was no way she could convince Lapis to move without having to fight to keep her from flying away and if they stood up they'd be an easier target. If the lightning struck the water they'd surely get shocked too, as close to it as they were.

"Please Lapis, listen to me. I'm only trying to keep you safe."

"I don't want your help! Just let me go!" Lapis cried trying to wriggle free tears starting to fall from her eyes.

"I'm sorry, Lapis. But I can't do that."

There exists in life split second moments where something happens and you either live or die. For Elsa and Lapis one of those moments occurred there on the beach when the next bolt of lightning came directly for them.

The resulting crack of thunder sounded like they'd been sitting next to a bomb that went off though slightly muffled. Only when the steam and dust cleared did Elsa figure out what happened. They were sitting there on the sand together, Lapis' head pressed into her shoulder, tears freely flowing now. Surrounding them was a ten inch thick bubble of ice and sand. Later perhaps Elsa would wonder why there was sand in the ice, but now all she wondered was if the bubble would keep them safe long enough for her to get through to Lapis.

"Lapis, can you hear me?" she asked, despite her ears ringing. She could only hope that Lapis wasn't too terrified to listen to her.

"Lapis please, if you can hear me nod or say something."

"Why are you doing this again?" Lapis cried fearfully not trying to get away anymore.

"Lapis, what is my name?"

Lapis shook her head, extremely confused. None of this made sense. Why would Jasper be talking to her like this? Jasper never talked like this. She was loud, rude and nasty. "What are you trying to do?"

"Lapis, if you understand what I'm asking, answer the question. What is my name?"

"Jasper! Your name is Jasper! Why do you keep asking!? What happened to you!? You're not the same. Something is wrong. You shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be here. This shouldn't be happening. Let me go!" The water hand rose again but it seemed to be more an intimidation attempt than an actual attack, as it didn't try to hit the ice bubble.

The water hand was a bad idea as the next bolt of lightning struck it and it exploded into steam. There was another really loud crash of thunder but this time Lapis didn't cry to be let go.

"Lapis, my name is not Jasper. I am not Jasper." Elsa had no idea who this 'Jasper' was but decided that the moment she ran into them they were in for a thorough asskicking for hurting this little angel.

"You're not... but that doesn't... none of this makes sense!"

"Lapis please try to focus, try to listen to me. I. Am. Not. Jasper. I'm not going to hurt you. I only want to help."

Lapis shook her head against Elsa's shoulder. She was so confused and terrified. None of it made sense to her. Something was wrong.

"Lapis, we have a lot in common. The same air, the same sky, the same ocean. Similar powers. The same laws of physics."

Lapis' eyes widened as she for just a moment remembered what she'd been doing before everything went wrong. Standing on the beach, talking to someone. Who? Who was there? It wasn't Jasper. It couldn't be Jasper.

"You want to teach me. I want to learn from you. We have more in common than you think."

That voice. It wasn't Jasper. Where was she? She wasn't still on the beach, was she? It wasn't the same. Something was wrong.

"Lapis, I'm sorry for staring. It's just you're so pretty."

That girl! Elsa! "Elsa?"

"Yes, Lapis. It's just me and you here. No one else." She held Lapis close to her and gasped when Lapis' wings went away.

"I'm scared." Lapis whispered, hugging Elsa back. She had no idea what happened but the thought, even if wrong, that Jasper had been there with her instead of this nice girl was too much.

"It's alright to be scared. Flashbacks and panic attacks can be terrifying, especially in combination."

"I don't understand."

Elsa gently ran her fingers through Lapis' hair. "That's okay. When the storm is gone, I'll help you learn to understand." Though the storm was already moving on, the lightning no longer striking near them.

"The storm?" Lapis tilted her head, she didn't remember there being a storm.

Neither of them could hear the thunder still rumbling in the sky from inside the ice bubble.

"There was a storm. I think it's what set off your flashback," Elsa said. She wasn't sure what else to say. She couldn't explain why a thunderstorm would trigger a flashback like that one without knowing more about Lapis' past.

"How do we get out of this bubble?" Lapis asked pulling away from Elsa and looking up at the ice bubble they were inside.


	3. Chapter 3

"Well... I'm not sure. Don't touch it though. It saved us from getting struck by lightning and might still be electrified." Elsa looked at the ice bubble and seemed to notice the sand in it for the first time. "Wait, is that sand in my ice? How?"

"Well, maybe you instinctively pulled up water from under the sand for the bubble and it brought the sand with it?" Lapis said reaching out to touch it.

Elsa grabbed her hand gently. "Electricity is not safe to touch."

Lapis chuckled. Elsa underestimated how damage resistant gem bodies are. "Relax Elsa, Gems aren't that easily injured."

Elsa shook her head and said, "You are practically made of water. Please, I don't want you getting hurt."

"Elsa I-" she started to say she'd be perfectly fine but lost those words when she saw the look on her face. Elsa looked as though she was terrified she might lose a friend. Lapis sighed quietly and pulled her hand back. "I won't touch it." She didn't really understand why, but Elsa seemed to care about her. Lapis didn't want to give her any reason not to trust her after what had just happened and what Elsa had helped her through.

"Thank you," Elsa said quietly then looking at the ice added, "If I made this then I should be able to destroy it." The ice shimmered in the light as the storm moved off into the distance and the clouds began breaking up. Elsa focused on the bubble and let her heart fill with warm feelings, then tried to make the bubble vanish. The bubble didn't move at first but then Lapis joined Elsa in focusing on making the bubble disappear. After a few minutes the bubble sort of shook then shattered into a brilliant cloud of sand and ice particles. The sand fell back to the beach in a sand shower and the ice particles just drifted off towards the storm on a breeze. They caught whatever light they could and reflected it all beautifully.

They remained on the sand a moment, Elsa still holding Lapis' hand, watching the ice particles float off until they heard someone calling their names. They turned to see who it was and saw Garnet and Pearl running over to them. They stood and waited for them to come over. Elsa let go of Lapis' hand with a slight blush, seemingly not wanting the others to see more into it than them being friends.

"Elsa, Lapis, are you two alright? We saw the lightning from the house and-"

"That was pretty impressive. Dangerous, but impressive," Garnet said and hugged them both, pleased that of all the things she'd seen that could have gone wrong, the one that came true was the one where they lived.

"It's a miracle that you two are alright," Pearl said already having a speech about safety in thunderstorms prepared that was intended for Steven.

"Relax Pearl. They're fine. I told you they'd make a good team."

Elsa nodded. "We're fine now." She forced herself not to ask the questions about Lapis that she really wanted to. She was afraid of making her mad, or worse, setting off some kind of flashback.

"Lapis, Pearl, go back to the temple and check on Steven. Make sure that he knows you and Elsa are both alright, Lapis," Garnet said.

Lapis nodded. "Alright." She didn't much like taking orders from anyone but she really didn't want Steven thinking she was hurt. So she headed back up to the shack with Pearl.

After they were both gone, Garnet turned to Elsa who was looking back out over the ocean and said, "What's on your mind?"

"Where did Lapis come from? We were talking and she mentioned not really understanding why she hadn't seen before that she and humans had a lot in common. Same universe, same laws of physics, same desires, and now that she's stuck here the same planet, the same ocean, and the same air. Where did she come from?"

Garnet could tell that wasn't what Elsa really wanted to know, but decided to humor her on that. "She's from the Gem homeworld. Pearl and I are as well. So was Steven's mother, Rose Quartz. Lapis didn't always believe in Earth and humanity the way Rose Quartz did. She's beginning to learn, mostly thanks to Steven."

"And Jasper? Who is that?" Elsa turned to look at Garnet when she asked that, though she wasn't sure she really wanted to know the answer.

"Jasper...Is another homeworld gem. She was very dangerous. Came here with another Gem, Peridot, to defeat us. She ended up finding out that Steven has Rose's gem and decided to take us back to homeworld. She put Lapis in prison on the ship as well, for not telling anyone that Steven had Rose's powers. Eventually we crashed the ship and defeated Jasper. She forced Lapis to fuse with her in an attempt to become more powerful and be able to beat us, but Lapis overpowered her when they were fused and used her water control to drag their fusion to the bottom of the ocean. They remained fused on the bottom of the ocean for a little over a week. We eventually did find them, defeated the fusion and saved Lapis."

"Jasper… Really scared Lapis, hurt her too, and I'm not sure she really understands how badly that affected her." She looked down for a moment and then looked up and said, "What's it mean for two gems to fuse?"

"It means two or more gems give up their physical forms temporarily and combine to form another, stronger gem."

"Does it hurt?"

"Not if the fusion is made of love or trust. However, it is extremely unpleasant and possibly even painful to be part of a fusion built on anger and mistrust, like Jasper and Lapis' fusion was."

"Lapis acts like she wasn't hurt by that fusion, doesn't she?" Elsa brought her hands up and hugged herself. "She seemed really freaked out by the storm. The thunder… it triggered something. I don't know if gem minds work like human minds, but I'm pretty sure she had a flashback. She… She thought I was Jasper."

"Lapis is strong, in her own way. She doesn't like anyone thinking she isn't. What did she say to you?"

"After I finally convinced her I wasn't Jasper and helped her realize what was really happening and where she really was, she told me she was scared. And that she didn't understand." Elsa squeezed her eyes shut for a moment before she felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up to see Garnet nodding encouragingly. "I'm just really worried about her. I know I barely know her, but we just… have a lot in common. There's a lot I don't know about her and a lot no one but Anna knows about me. I feel like somewhere along the way we shared some similar experiences."

"You should probably talk to Lapis herself about at least some of this," Garnet said.

"Of all the things I said to her during the storm the one that bothered her the most was, 'just let me help you.' I probably should talk to her, but I feel like...like she doesn't want to talk about it."

Garnet nodded momentarily, shocked but recovering quickly. "Lapis is… different from the rest of us. She's stubborn. Doesn't like admitting that she needs help, in fact I've never seen her do that at all."

"I know, but even so. She did need help. She would have flown off into the storm on her water wings if I hadn't stopped her. Then… who knows what could have happened. I really just don't want to make things worse by getting her to talk about something she doesn't want to."

"Sometimes talking to people about issues they don't want to discuss is the only way to help them through those issues," Garnet said.

"I can't force her to talk about something that's obviously painful, and she doesn't want to talk about her. I'm not… I can't let myself hurt any of my friends… not again."

Garnet nodded and said quietly, "I understand that. I feel the same way talking to Steven sometimes. But sometimes you just have to talk. Sometimes it's hard, yes. And sometimes it may hurt a little. But if you never try then you'll never be able to help. Also, your girlfriend saw everything from the lighthouse and seems very impatient talk to you. If you need any more advice, come find either me or Pearl and we'll do our best."

Elsa nodded and smiled slightly. "Thanks Garnet. I'll think about that."

Garnet nodded and walked off back towards the temple, while Elsa turned to look back at the ocean for a second as Anna walked closer.

"Elsa, are you...is everything okay? I haven't seen you make the ice bubble since we got caught in that explosion that one time," Anna said moving to stand next to Elsa.

"Lapis, she...had a flashback and that caused a panic attack. Basically, for a little while there during the storm she thought I was Jasper, the gem who imprisoned her and forced her to do something she really didn't want to. That really hurt her, if not physically, then psychologically. And I… saved her, well me too, from getting struck by lightning. Anna," Elsa turned and hugged her girlfriend gently. "What am I going to do? I promised I would help her learn to understand what happened during the storm, but… how can I do that, if I don't even understand when it happens to me?"

"The same way you helped me understand it. With patience and love. You'll do fine, Els. I promise," Anna said hugging her back. "Trust me."

"It's just with just what little I know about Lapis, I already know we both share some of the same life experiences, just in a different way. She was a prisoner. More than once. Just like..."

"Don't talk about that Elsa, I know how much it hurts you when you do."

Elsa hugged Anna tighter. "She kept saying that something was wrong. They used to say that about me all the time. Just… That painting above my bed, is the only thing other than you that kept me going all those years. And now, finally meeting the girl behind the painting, the girl in the painting I mean, and finding out we're practically the same. It's a little unsettling. Do you think my grandmother knew any Gems?"

"Yes, actually I do. She used to talk about the magic necklace in her jewelry box all the time. The one she simply referred to as Onyx." Anna shrugged. "You have that necklace in our room at the inn. Maybe you could show it to the Gems and see what they know about it."

"It's cracked? It's been cracked for a long time," Elsa said as though that were the only reason why it couldn't possibly be a Gem.

"Have you ever worn it when you sleep?" Anna asked. "My dad told me that your mom mentioned that her grandmother never went to sleep without it."

Elsa nodded. She honestly hated that Anna had better memories of her parents than she did, but she loved hearing about the happy things they used to do or say. "Right. I'll bring it to the Gems, but Anna, have you ever worn it at all?"

Anna shook her head. "It's not mine to wear. It belongs to you. Wear it tonight when you go to sleep. See what happens. Maybe you'll have a dream like your grandmother used to. If it's Gem related I bet that will happen."

"I'm not sure I want to, Anna. I don't know that I want to find out after all these years of thinking my grandmother had magic, just like me, that it turns out to be some alien necklace. As much as I like the Crystal Gems and their friends, I don't want to find out that one of the things I loved most in my life was a lie."

"That's understandable," Anna said gently hugging Elsa back. "Still, it's an interesting possibility. The real question is, if it is Gem related, how did your grandmother get ahold of it in the first place?"

"Her dad was an explorer. He probably found it," Elsa said with a shrug. "There's a lot about the world we don't know, more now than ever before. How do you think the gems avoided..."

"The government? Well from what I've seen, the government doesn't care much about this place. They've had the same mayor for years and he runs a re-election campaign constantly, but it doesn't seem like anyone ever runs against him. There's so much weird stuff that happens here because of the Crystal Gems that I wouldn't be surprised if the government likes to act like this place doesn't exist. It's easier that way," Anna said.

"I wonder if the gems have anything I could read," Elsa said pulling away from Anna. "It's getting a little late, let's go back to them and ask if they have any books on gem history."

"That sounds incredibly boring," Anna said with a shrug. "But you want to do that. Let's do it."

They walked together up to the shack and Steven let them in just as Pearl walked out of the door at the back with a sword in her hand.

"See if this one feels better in your hand Connie, Steven you might want to step back," Pearl said handing the sword over to Connie.

Connie took the sword with a nod and moved to swing it around a bit, but stopped after less than a minute. "This one feels off balance in my hand."

Pearl nodded. "We'll keep looking."

"Wow, you guys are sword fighters too?" Elsa asked almost forgetting about the books she wanted to ask about. "That's awesome."

"You can sword fight?" Connie asked excitedly.

"I don't know how good I am at it, but yes," Elsa said with a smile. She held out her hand and Anna quickly moved away. With very little effort on her part, a slender rapier made of ice appeared in her hand. She quickly pulled it in so that she was holding it up in front of her. She she kept her grip on the handle relatively loose but not so much so as to allow the blade to wiggle in her hand.

"Elsa, you're distracted," Anna said.

"Huh? Oh right." She moved so that she was holding the ice sword with it's tip on the ground and her hand on the pommel. "We were about to head back to where we're staying for the night but I was wondering first if you maybe had any books I could read about Gem history? I'm curious now and I like learning."

"Say what you're really thinking Elsa," Anna said with a chuckle.

"I… I think I could probably have some connection to all this and I want to know as much as I can," Elsa said hoping Pearl wouldn't just think that she's insane.

"You do have a connection," Pearl said as she took the sword back from Connie and put it in its sheath. "The paintings you showed us prove it. In the one painting of the island, the platform you saw is a warp pad." She walked over to the one in the temple, at the back of the room. "This is one of them. There's more out there. Only gems can activate them."

Anna looked back and gasped. "That's the thingy. Elsa the thing, you remember it right? When we were little and playing in the old castle that your aunt turned into a museum? It was in the courtyard. There's one there. You made it glow. Go stand on it."

"What? Anna no," Elsa gasped. She made her sword vanish and crossed her arms. Of all the things she wanted to do today, pissing off ancient beings from outer space by messing with their old magical tech was not one of them.

"Do it Elsa, please?" Anna flashed her puppy eyes again.

"I don't think Pearl would appreciate me messing around with ancient gem technology." She looked to Peal for support in this matter.

Pearl frowned. That didn't sound possible. She stood for a moment, not saying anything, just thinking of why that might be possible, what could have caused it.

"Aww come on Elsa, what's the worst that could happen?" Anna whined. She really just wanted to see.

"I don't know, ask Garnet. She knows everything," Elsa said. "I don't want to do anything that might break something."

"You won't break it," Pearl said. "It takes a lot to break these. There isn't really much that could go wrong. You're not a gem, after all. There's not really any reason you should be able to activate it." She looked down then nodded. "Come give it a try."

Elsa sighed and walked back and stood on the warp pad. She wondered for a second if anything would happen then remembered the warp pad that Anna mentioned in her aunt's museum. Suddenly it started glowing and before she knew it she was gone, up in a blue stream of light.

"Okay this is weird," was all she could think to say about the situation before she reached the end location. A castle in Northern Corona.

Well this probably wasn't good. Still, nothing wrong with having a look around right? She could always go back the same way she came, and her aunt did have the painting that Garnet wanted.

"Aunt Susanne?" She called out hoping that none of the security guards would come attach her. She wandered off into the museum, thinking it shouldn't be closed yet, forgetting that time zones are a thing.

"What do you mean she's gone?" Anna asked for a third time. "Can't you bring her back?"

"No," Pearl said. "I can't. I don't know where she went or how she activated the warp pad in the first place."

"Pearl, will Elsa be okay?" Steven asked walking up to them with Connie. "Shouldn't we try to find her?"

"Steven we don't know where she went. She shouldn't have been able to activate the warp pad at all. This doesn't make sense," Pearl said. She closed her eyes and sighed. "We need to wait for Garnet."

"Are you sure that only gems can activate this thing?" Anna asked walking up onto it and frowning. "As far as I know, Elsa's never been anything but human. Sure there's something weird about her entire family, but she's a human."

"Positive," Pearl said.

"I know where she went," Anna said. "The only place she knows with one of these. Her aunt's castle museum of oddities in Corona."

"Aunt Susanne?" Elsa called out again walking past odd things against every wall, behind ropes and in glass display cases. In some of the cases were these magnificent black bubbles with gemstones, or shards of gemstones in them. Elsa had never understood where those came from but they were wonderful. When she got to the front entrance and still hadn't found her aunt she sighed, realizing that meant the museum was closed. Then she noticed something she'd never paid attention to before, a carving above the door. She looked up and took a step back to get a better look at it. She shook her head, sure she was seeing things, but above the entrance to the castle was a carving of Rose Quartz and some, what could be assumed to be, humans.

"This place belonged to Steven's mom?" she whispered in shock.

"That doesn't help much," Pearl said with a quiet sigh. "Since neither me nor Steven know where that is."

Anna sighed. Explaining it in human terms probably wouldn't help since the warp pad was magical gem tech. "When will Garnet get back?"

"I don't know."

"I can't believe it. If Rose Quartz owned this place..."

"Elsa," a voice said from the door. "Where did you learn of Rose Quartz? You're not supposed to know about that yet."

"Aunt Susanne," Elsa said looking down toward the voice and then back up to the carving when she noticed that it was only her aunt. "What do you know about her?"

"The better question is what do you know, Elsa?" Susanne said stepping into the museum.

"Well I know that there's polymorphic sentient gems on our planet that came here from space," Elsa said. "Rose Quartz was one of them."

"Is," Susanne corrected, not knowing about Steven.

"Was. She gave up her physical form a few years ago to bring her son Steven into the world. He's half human."

"That's possible!?"

Anna jumped off the warp pad and paced around for a moment then the warp pad lit up in a brilliant blue beam for a second and Garnet stepped down with a gem in a bubble. "What's with all the sad faces?" She tapped the bubble and it warped itself into the basement of the temple.

"Elsa activated the warp pad," Steven said looking super impressed. Then he frowned. "But we don't know how to get where she went."

Garnet nodded and thought for a moment. "She'd come back on her own. That's one possibility I see. However, a more interesting future lies in us going to her."

"Yes," Elsa said with a nod. "It is. It happened after all, so it must be possible. I repeat. What do you know of them? I'm not some stupid kid. I know that great grandma's paintings are all related to the Gems. I even met some of them. Particularly 'The Blue Angel'."

"That's not possible… the… she should be… uhh… shit."

"Did I say something wrong?"

"No. Maybe. I don't know. Listen. Thousands of years ago, the Gems came to Earth. They were doing something horrible to the planet and it was hurting the Earth. Rose Quartz couldn't stand it anymore, so she and an army of her followers both Gem and Human alike turned on the other Gems and eventually kicked them off the planet. During those wars, our ancestors fought alongside Rose's armies."

The five of them walked through the halls of the museum, guided by Anna.

"Don't touch anything," Anna said. "No matter how weird, or how Gem related you might think it is. Security would kill us, or at least try."

"These are bubbled gems," Pearl said looking into one of the display cases. "I haven't seen Onyx gem bubbles… in a long time."

Anna winced slightly and frowned. There was no denying the gem connection Elsa's family had now. Especially not when they came across Elsa and her aunt by the entrance right as Susanne said, "...our ancestors fought alongside Rose's armies."

"Oh cool! Elsa's family was part of my mom's army!" Steven said bouncing happily.

Elsa and Susanne turned around quickly and spotted them all standing there. Pearl was trying to hush Steven but Garnet looked thoroughly impressed with this castle and Anna looked a little worried.

"What are you guys doing here?" Elsa asked then looked to Susanne. "Does this mean you're not going to tell me the story anymore?"

"Elsa for the longest time, we worked alongside Gems," Susanne said glancing at the others and deciding they must not have thought they were any problem or they'd have pulled their weapons by now. "...what few remained until there was only one left here. Rose came every once in awhile to see what we were doing and how Onyx was holding up. Onyx was the gem who used to watch over this castle and protect it and the humans who live around here from terrifying monsters."

She thought for a second and glanced at both Elsa and the others to make sure they weren't confused about anything yet. "About 60 years ago, Onyx's gem got cracked and she went poof just like the monsters she fought did. No one knew how to help her and she didn't come back that time. Everyone was really worried, but my grandmother said not to worry, that Rose could help. But Rose never came, so grandma fixed Onyx's gem loosely on the necklace that she had given her. Grandma loved that necklace; she never took it off. She and Onyx were best friends before that and grandma really wanted to be able to see her again. Then one day soon after giving you the painting of 'the blue angel' grandma said to give you Onyx. That whether you knew it or not you'd take her to the one person who could help her."

"Steven!" Elsa gasped. "If Rose could help her then maybe… Steven, do you know how to fix cracked Gems?"

"I do," Steven said happily. "I fixed Lapis' gem."

"Then that's not a problem, Onyx is back in Beach city..."

"No she's not," Anna said reaching in her pocket. "Before we came here, I asked them to wait a second and ran and got her from the room. I figured if you came here, it was probably a good idea to bring her along too." She pulled out the necklace that Onyx was on and smiled a little.

Steven looked at the gem and smiled. He took the necklace from Anna and gently undid the wires that held her onto it. "Sorry guys, this might be a little weird." Then he brought the gem up to his mouth and just licked it.

Elsa and Anna shivered a little bit grossed out, but Pearl's reaction was priceless. She looked as though she'd seen a ghost or just witnessed Steven set himself on fire.

"Steven!" Pearl gasped. "You don't know where that's been. There could be germs."

"Pearl relax," Steven said diplomatically. "You know my healing powers come from my spit."

They all waited for a few seconds, then the gem started glowing and the cracks healed.

"Why isn't she regenerating?" Pearl asked.

"Just give her time, her cracked gem was just healed," Garnet said.

"Were you two friends of Rose?" Susanne asked while they waited to see how long it would take Onyx to regenerate.

"Yes," Pearl said.

"Now we are friends of Steven," Garnet said. "We will always remember Rose, but part of her now lives within him."

""That's pretty nice," Susanne said. "I never met Rose myself, but I heard wonderful things about her."

"She was wonderful-"

Pearl stopped talking when Onyx's gem began to glow again and floated up and away from Steven. They watched as the Gem formed a white light that shifted into the shape of a person for a moment and then slowly floated to the ground. When the light vanished, Onyx, a gem about the size of Elsa was standing there. Her skin was as black as the night and she wore white pants with a white shirt with a black dragon design on it, and black boots that were mid thigh length. She also had a black cape and a white crew cut. Her gem was where her right eye would have been. She shook her head to clear it. Then looked around, her left eye looked like there was a galaxy trapped in its blackness.

When she spotted Elsa and Susanne, she walked over to them. "You must be Embla's relatives. Do you know where she is?"

Susanne looked away for a moment. "She, she isn't here anymore."

Onyx looked at her for a moment trying to decide what she meant. Then after a moment figured it out and simply asked, "She still thought of me as a friend, though, didn't she?"

"To her very last breath," Susanne said.

Onyx nodded. Then without looking back said, "Pearl, Garnet, it's been a long time."

"It has," Pearl said. "You've been here this whole time?"

"Rose told me to protect this place and the humans who lived here," Onyx said. "I never saw a reason to stop doing that job after the wars. During the wars I lost all of my gem friends except you two and Rose. But a couple of my human friends survived by staying here and protecting their families from within this castle we claimed in the name of Rose's Army." Then she stopped talking for a second and frowned. "Without me no one could defeat the monster in the dungeon could they," she said suddenly looking between Elsa and Susanne.

"What monster in the dungeon?" Elsa asked while Susanne shook her head.

"No, that thing's still down there. We were waiting for the right time to try to see if Elsa could kill it."

"You what!?" Elsa asked in shock.


	4. Chapter 4

"We were gonna have you kill it when you got enough control of your powers," Susanne said, looking really guilty.

"And did it ever occur to you that maybe I don't want to fight a monster?" Elsa snapped. She was tired of people expecting her do whatever magical job they asked her to just because she could. She was actually really mad that even her own aunt felt like that after how hard she'd fought to get away from the people who thought like that, who treated her like an object meant to do nothing more than follow their orders. She'd thought that Susanne was different than the rest.

Onyx placed a hand on Elsa's shoulder and turned her so that she'd be looking in her eyes. She could feel Elsa's anger almost as strongly as if it were her own. She wondered if perhaps Elsa had the shard that had come off her gem when she cracked it. Embla had promised to keep it safe. "It's not worth being angry over. You are so much like Embla. Who was she to you?"

"My grandmother," Elsa said, calming a little as she looked into Onyx's eye and gem. "She always believed in me, and never made me do things I don't want to."

"You are just like her," Onyx said. "Come with me, please. I'd like to get to know you."

Elsa nodded. "I'd like to get to know you too. You were her best friend."

"I can be your best friend too," Onyx said. "Or one of them at least."

Elsa smiled. "I'd love that." Then she turned to Suzanne. "The painting of the two gems, the little blue one and the little red one dancing on the beach. It belongs with Garnet. She'd appreciate it more, and art should be with people who appreciate it."

"Take that painting and my sword," Onyx said, pointing to a black sheathed sword with a straight blade that was about a meter in total length from the pommel to the end of the scabbard that was hanging on the wall. "And wait for us by the warp pad. This should not take long."

Susanne nodded, though she hated it. But Onyx looked like she wouldn't hesitate to use force against someone who was making her her friends angry. She headed out to go get the picture.

Onyx hugged Elsa close to help her calm down the rest of the way, then smiled when Elsa hugged back. When she pulled back she turned to look at the others. "I have a plan, sort of. I..." she looked down to see Connie and Steven. "I don't know you two, but you." she pointed at Steven. "I sense Rose Quartz within you. That's good. We're going to need your shield."

Steven nodded and smiled. "I can do that."

Onyx looked at Connie and Anna. "I don't know what you two can do, but you look like you want to help. It's better though if you don't. There's not much room in the dungeon and someone needs to make sure that..."

"Susanne," Elsa whispered.

"Susanne does what we told her to."

"I can do that," Anna said with a smile. "She needs to be intimidated. Connie, wanna help?"

Connie thought about that for a second. "Well, I don't have my sword so I'll be kind of in the way down there. I can be intimidating. Plus, this museum is cool and I kind of want to look around if I can."

"That's the spirit," Onyx said happily. "Alright, Elsa, Pearl, Garnet and you Star Child, come with me. We're gonna go kick that monster...til it poofs."

"Onyx, do you really have a plan?" Pearl asked as they followed her lead to get to the dungeon.

"Of course. Pearl, when have you ever known me not to have a plan?" Onyx said with a smile.

"All the time?" Pearl said seriously. "I've never known you to be the one to have a plan."

"I always have a plan. Find the monster. Make it regret causing trouble."

Pearl sighed. That was not what 'I have a plan' should mean. But then, she'd never known Onyx to be in charge before.

"This monster's gem is on it's back, under a thick coat of coarse fur," Onyx said as they walked. "The entire thing is covered in that fur. Causing it injury with your staff will be hard, Pearl. Getting it injured with my bow will be even harder. Elsa, what can you do?"

"Ice, snow, make it cold."

"She has an ice sword," Steven said excitedly.

"And you Star Child?"

"I have my mom's shield, and I have healing powers."

"Anything else?" Onyx asked thinking about this. The shield would keep him safe from the monster's attacks, but that wouldn't help them defeat it.

"Uhh...I'm not sure."

Onyx frowned a little. That didn't help much. Defending against the monster would be easy, but fighting against it would be different. "Elsa, have you ever killed anything with your powers before?"

"I'd rather not say," Elsa said biting her lip a little. "Though when I freeze things they can sometimes shatter when hit by something. I've done that with things ranging from a thin metal fence and chains, to glass, a thick stone wall, and even plants before."

Onyx smiled broadly. "I have a plan. Garnet, you're good at smashing things right?"

Garnet summoned her gauntlets and smiled. "You could say that."

"Excellent." Onyx smiled. "This should be pretty easy. The plan is simple: the four of us distract the monster and Elsa freezes it, then we smash it."

"And what if that doesn't work," Pearl said. Even though she was happy Onyx had an actual plan.

"The Garnet and Elsa will need to distract it, while you go for the eyes and I get a clear shot to shoot an exploding shot into its mouth," Onyx said, half making it up as she went along. She wasn't sure that her arrows still did the exploding thing on command. She hadn't used them in many years.

"I thought Elsa said she didn't want to kill a monster," Steven said as they were walking down the stairs to the dungeon door.

"Elsa doesn't want to be ordered to do things," Onyx said looking at her. "Right?"

"I hate being bossed around like I'm some kind of tool instead of a person. That's all I've ever been treated like by everyone I cared about except Anna and Embla, my grandmother. I used to think Susanne was different, her and my parents both. I don't want to talk about it anymore," Elsa said then smiled. "I want to help you all. I want to. It's different now because I have a choice. If Onyx's plan B is the one that would work best you wouldn't even need me. I want to help. This is my choice."

Steven nodded. "I like that. I'm glad you want to help us."

Elsa smiled. "It's the least I can do for my friends."

Onyx stopped walking when they reached the door at the bottom of the stairs. "Alright. This is where it gets tricky. The monster is in here, and very mad about being locked in such a small space for so long."

Elsa nodded seriously.

Onyx opened the door. "Remember the plan," she said as they walked in.

They walked in together silently, looking around as the door shut behind them. They looked around the darkened dungeon for a moment, confused about how they were supposed to fight a monster in the dark. Onyx realized that the others couldn't see in the dark as well as she could and snapped her fingers causing the torches lining the walls to light up. They looked around to see they were in a set of hallways with prison like cells on each side.

Steven shivered a little but quickly calmed when he felt Pearl's hand on his shoulder.

"Let's get this over with," Elsa said quickly. "No one likes it down here."

They began to walk through the halls of cells, following Onyx's lead as she led them to the biggest chamber in the dungeon. However, when they got there it was empty.

"Onyx, where's the monster?" Pearl asked.

"It's coming," Onyx said as she stepped into the room. "Come in and get away from the door."

They moved across the room quickly as Pearl heard a sound sort of like claws against stone. A few moments later the monster came into the room. It looked like a strange wolf, with glowing red eyes and snow-white coarse fur covering its entire body. It was easily twice the size of a normal wolf and in Elsa's eyes three times as frightening. It sniffed the air for a second then opened its mouth.

"Steven your shield!" Onyx said as she quickly pushed Elsa away so that she'd have a better place to attack from.

Steven nodded and quickly let summoned his shield as the wolf monster let out an energy blast from its mouth that would have otherwise vaporized them. The wolf stepped in to observe its prey, then growled loudly at the sight of the shield. Teeth bared, it at snapped at them.

Elsa gasped and formed her ice sword quickly. She wasn't about to let this overgrown mutt attack her friends. She thought for a second and then ran at the monster, focusing on letting her power flow through the sword. While the others distracted it by throwing blows at its face, one taking hitting it the the left eye causing it to howl in pain, she stabbed it as hard as she could in the leg. The ice spread up and down its leg quickly and within a minute encased its entire body.

"Now!" Onyx said.

Garnet smiled and punched the wolf as hard as she could and the ice encasing it shattered like glass, casing the monster to poof into its gem to protect itself from the shards of ice. One of the ice shards hit Elsa on the arm cutting her. The others were protected by Steven's shield and Onyx quickly rushed forward and bubbled it as the magic smoke cleared. They vanished their weapons away when it was all done.

Elsa walked over and smiled, not quite realizing how badly her arm was cut because she'd grown pretty intolerant to pain in her life. "It worked."

"Elsa! You're bleeding!" Pearl gasped.

"I am?" She looked at her arm and gasped, shaking a little. "I g-guess I am. I d-don't suppose any of you have a first aid kit?"

Pearl nodded and her gem glowed for a second. A roll of gauze and some hydrogen peroxide appeared from it and she grabbed them both.

"Umm Pearl, I think it might take more than that," Elsa said trying not to look at it. Seeing her own blood made her queazy.

"She probably needs stitches," Onyx said.

"Oh no," Elsa said with a gasp. "None of you are getting near me with a needle."

"Try to relax a little, Elsa, I'm just going to clean it. None of us know how to properly sew a person," Pearl said.

"Well, I do," Onyx said. "But she doesn't want us doing that."

"Where did you learn to do that?" Pearl asked making a cotton cloth appear from her gem then placing it gently under the wound as she gently poured a little peroxide over the cut.

"One of the humans taught me."

"Interesting skill," Elsa said trying to hold her arm still. "You're still not getting near me with a needle."

"Guys!" Steven said. "I have healing powers, remember?"

Garnet chuckled, she'd been waiting for someone to point that out. "Just let Steven fix it."

"Is that sanitary?" Pearl asked, thinking about it. That would be Steven's saliva mixing with Elsa's injury. Surely that wouldn't be sanitary.

"You cleaned the cut," Steven pointed out. "And my mouth isn't dirty, I brushed my teeth."

"Let him do it," Elsa said moving over and kneeling in front of him so he could reach the cut.

Steven smiled and licked his hand then gently placed it over Elsa's cut. She suppressed a shudder, then he lifted his hand and they watched, except Elsa who felt it, the cut heal itself up. When it was done all that was left was a small red scar.

"I think I figured something out," Elsa said, thinking about how easily they forgot Steven's healing powers. "You're all nerds."

The gems looked at each other then Elsa, then Steven.

"I-Is that a good thing?" Pearl asked.

"Yeah," Elsa said with a chuckle. "It is. We should probably go now."

Onyx nodded. "That would be a good idea." Then she held up her bubble with the monster's gem inside. "Do you guys have anywhere to put this? I don't feel like they're safe just sitting around here."

"Yeah, you can bring it back to the temple," Garnet said. "If you would like to come back with us."

"Garnet, do we have room for another gem?"

"Excuse you Pearl, but I can take care of myself. Besides, I much prefer places I've made for myself. Perhaps I could build a little place of my own near the temple." Onyx motioned for them to follow her as they left.

They walked back to the museum entrance in silence, each thinking about something but none of them thinking about the same thing. Elsa kept glancing at Onyx and wondering just why exactly she was so interested in being friends and how she and Embla had become friends in the first place. Onyx was wondering if leaving this place was really the best plan, but mostly she just wanted a change of scenery, and this place had changed. It wasn't a home anymore. Pearl was wondering just what it meant finding Onyx still alive after all these years.

When they got to the warp pad after finding no one at the entrance, Garnet's face lit up when she saw Susanne holding the painting. She walked over and gently took the painting from her. A single tear fell from under her shades. "It's even more beautiful in person."

That reminded Elsa of something as Onyx thanked Susanne for taking care of her things and reminded her of the danger should any of the bubbles holding gems be popped. Susanne nodded and handed over Onyx's sword.

"Onyx, did you have something to do with Embla's paintings?" Elsa asked.

"Huh?" She looked at the painting that Garnet was holding. "Yes actually. I bet you haven't seen the best ones. The history paintings."

Pearl froze as she was stepping onto the warp pad where Connie and Anna were waiting. "History paintings. You mean like Gem history?"

"Yes," Onyx said. "Like gem history."

"How do you know I haven't seen them?" Elsa asked.

"Because I locked them away, in an area of the castle that humans can't access," Onyx said.

"Why?" Elsa wanted to see them.

Onyx glanced at Susanne. Then looked back to Elsa and shook her head. "I'll tell you when we get back." She hoped Elsa would understand.

Elsa sighed and nodded. She walked over and stepped up on the warp pad. It was a little bit of a tight fit, but all seven of them made it on there and all seven of them made it back to Beach City whole.

"This is the temple?" Onyx asked stepping off the warp pad. "It looks like a shack to me."

"This is Steven's room," Pearl said as they all stepped off and Connie and Steven ran to the front of the shack to go watch TV.

Anna latched onto Elsa's arm to steady herself for a second. Anna smiled at Onyx. "It's nice to meet you, by the way. I"m Anna."

"I know," Onyx said. "I heard Elsa say your name when I was stuck inside my gem."

"How?" Pearl asked.

"Elsa, what's in the little bag on the string around your neck?" Onyx asked.

It seemed like a distraction technique to Elsa, but Onyx shouldn't have even known that she was wearing it. "I have no idea. I've never opened it," she said pulling it up to rest on top of her shirt.

"Open it, please." Onyx smiled at her sweetly.

"I don't know if I should. Embla told me not to open it. She said it was safer that way," Elsa said resting her hand on the string of the bag.

"Please," Onyx insisted.

"Well, okay." Elsa gently untied the string of the bag and opened the top. When she did, a little black bubble with a little black gem shard floated out.

"Onyx is that..."

"A shard of my gem, yes," Onyx said before Pearl could finish her question. "When I cracked my gem, that shard came off. I bubbled it and gave it to Embla because I wasn't sure if Rose would need it to fix my gem. I was fine for a couple of days until," she held her left arm out from under her cloak to reveal the white bandage like wrap right above her elbow, "an unfortunate incident with a bear, then I retreated to my gem to heal, but I couldn't get back out because of the crack."

"That does not explain how you could hear from inside your gem," Pearl said.

"Oh, yeah. I have no idea how that happened. I just assumed it was because of the shard." She walked over to Elsa and gently put the bubble back down in the pouch. "I was able to communicate with Embla while I was in my gem through her dreams when she wore the gem."

"Is that why she was able to use the warp pad by herself?" Anna asked.

"Wait what?" Onyx stopped halfway through tying the pouch back onto the string. "That… She shouldn't… Did you really use the warp pad by yourself?"

"Uhh yes? That's how I go to the castle from here," Elsa said, not sure why it was an issue. It wasn't like she'd hurt anyone by doing it. "Should I try without the shard?"

"You don't really know how the warp pad works," Onyx said. "If it works again, without the shard, we'll just end up with more questions than answers. The first of those being: Where on Earth did Elsa go this time?"

"How about if I warp to the castle and warp right back?" Elsa asked. Her curiosity was getting the better of her and it wasn't fair if she wasn't allowed to at least try.

"Elsa, three hours ago you didn't want to step on the warp pad at all," Anna said. "Now you're dying to try. What happened?"

"I'm curious now," Elsa said as if that explained everything in the world and was the only reason anyone ever changed their minds about anything at all.

"Pearl, say something," Onyx said. She had run out of reasons why Elsa shouldn't try and hoped Pearl would know some.

"I want to see her try."

Onyx just sighed. "Give me the pouch."

Elsa smiled and untied the string from around her neck and handed the pouch over to Onyx, then moved to stand on the warp pad. "Alright so there and back. It shouldn't be too hard." She concentrated for a second on where she wanted to go then the warp pad lit up with the bluish white light again and she was off. Onyx was right after all, Elsa thought when she arrived at the castle, more questions than answers. She quickly warped herself back, but not before someone in the courtyard bushes had noted that she'd been there.

"Alright, so can anyone explain why that worked?" Elsa asked as she stepped off the warp pad in the temple.

"You must be part gem," Pearl said. "That's the only logical explanation."

"But that isn't possible," Onyx said. "Is it?"

Pearl shrugged. "A few years ago I wouldn't have believed it possible either, but Steven...he's part gem. Half human, half Rose."

"Intriguing, but Elsa has no gem in her. I would be able to sense it if she did." Onyx sighed. Everything she could sense about Elsa was normal aside from her slightly below average temperature.

"Uhh guys, I'm right here you know," Elsa said a little annoyed at them talking about her like she wasn't there. "I'd prefer to be included in this conversation. How exactly does the warp pad work?"

"Magic." Onyx smiled. That was how a lot of gem things worked.

"Onyx, that's your answer for how everything works," Pearl said with a sigh. "The warp pads rely on a connection with our gems, which contain our consciousness. They read our thoughts of where we need to be and send us there." Pearl frowned. "I think. It's ancient gem technology. Been around longer than most any gem I know. We usually just accept that it works and don't bother knowing why or how."

"I thought you were an engineer," Onyx said. "Don't you know?"

Pearl glared at Onyx. "I am. But that doesn't mean I know how technology from before me works." She frowned. "I don't know. I hate admitting it, but I don't know. I never knew. It wasn't relevant. Humans can't, and have never been able to use them. That was all that mattered, I don't know how to fix broken ones other than Peridot's machines."

Elsa sighed and shook her head. That didn't help at all. "It would never be necessary for a human to need to use the warp pad. I think a good idea to test this new theory of mine that maybe it's an unforeseen error in the programing is for someone who we don't know can use it alone to try. Anna?"

"What? Why me?" Anna said quickly pulling away from Elsa. She could already tell that this was a bad idea. If she could use the thing with no help, then that would probably mean it's broken.

"Because Steven and Connie left," Elsa said pointing out that the four of them were the only ones still in the room.

Anna sighed and looked at the two gems. "Any objections?"

"The worst that could happen is it works," Pearl said with a sigh. "Go ahead and try."

That wasn't the response Anna wanted but she didn't argue with it. She simply walked up and stood on the warp pad thinking about the warp pad at the museum and willing the pad to take her there, but after five minutes of just standing there with nothing happening she gave up. "It's not going to work."

Onyx looked from Anna to Elsa then to the pouch with her gem shard in it. "I have a theory. Try with this." She held out the pouch by the string.

Anna took it gently and tied it around her neck then tried again. And again. For another five minutes she kept trying. And it kept not working. Just like Pearl thought. It had to be something about Elsa.

"Do you think it's possible that the warp pad recognizes the magic in Elsa and acts like she's a gem because of it?" she asked as she stepped down off the pad when she finally gave up. Then she untied the string from around her neck and tied it back around Elsa's, looking to Pearl and Onyx for an answer.

"That's a good theory," Onyx said.

"Except it doesn't react to our 'magic' it reacts to our gems," Pearl said though she honestly wasn't sure. Rose would know if she were here. Pearl shook her head slightly to get rid of that thought, Rose wasn't here anymore and thinking about that just made her sad.

"What about the warp whistle?" Steven asked, scaring literally everyone.

"Steven! How long have you been standing there?" Pearl asked trying to hide how much he'd startled her.

"About five minutes? If it's not magic, then how does the warp whistle work?" He looked between Pearl and Onyx. "My dad used the warp whistle to warp to the geode. How does it work?"

"Magic," Onyx said excitedly. "I've been trying to tell Pearl that for like, the whole conversation. Magic is exactly why the warp whistle works. So it must be why the warp pad works."

"Except," Pearl said glaring at Onyx again, "there's been other magical humans who've tried using warp pads in the past without a gem and only ended up making a fool of themselves. Like that guy with the pointy hat. Merlin? Yeah. That would have actually been really funny if it wasn't so distracting to try to keep the dragon gem monster from killing the idiot."

That certainly served to distract Anna. "You met Merlin? The Merlin? Like King Arthur, Excalibur, The Knights of the Round Table? That Merlin? He was real!?" If it was possible she was even more bouncy than when she thought they might know what happened to Amelia Earhart.

"Yes. Though I was more impressed with the Knights," Pearl said.

"Leave it to you to be more impressed by some fancy guys in fancy armor with fancy swords than the human who made a castle vanish, even if it was an accident," Onyx said slightly more mockingly than she intended. It had been a long time since she'd interacted with anyone other than Embla or Rose and she wasn't quite used to it yet. Earlier had been different, she'd been in fight mode. Trying to prove herself to Pearl, who'd last seen her in a rather embarrassing moment of her life.

"As usual, your head is in the clouds," Pearl said.

"You haven't seen my head in like 4000 years," Onyx said not really understanding if that was an insult or not.

"I'm literally looking at your head right now," Pearl countered.

"Guys don't fight, please," Steven said stepping between them.

"Don't think too much about this Star Child," Onyx said. "I just never really understood why Pearl liked swords so much. Magic is generally much cleaner."

"As if you were ever one for clean," Pearl said in return.

"Excuse you Pearl, but I am not messy."

"Enough!" Elsa snapped stepping between them. "Pearl has her reasons for preferring swords and knights. Just like you have your reasons for preferring magic and wizards."

"I kept everything neat and tidy, I've never lost anything. Even when my friends fell. I never lost them. I know exactly what bubble I put them in." Onyx wasn't even really aware of the fact that she was crying. "I'm not messy. I just don't like letting go of them. I already failed them once. I can't do that again."

Elsa and Steven stepped back for a moment, not wanting to interfere unless Pearl seemed like she would yell at Onyx again. But what Pearl did instead shocked everyone, including herself.

Pearl stepped forward and pulled Onyx into a fierce hug. "It's okay," she whispered to the smaller gem. "I didn't mean it like that. I didn't mean to make you sad or insult you. I just meant that I remember before the war, your favorite thing to do here on Earth was play in the rain and mud, and climb trees. You didn't fail your friends. You saved them from something worse. Something none of us really understand."

"No, I failed them. I couldn't save them and they fell," Onyx said against Pearl's shoulder, not moving to hug her back.

"No. You did not fail. You did the best you could. You did better than most of us. If we had thought to bubble the fallen gems the way you thought to do with your friends, we wouldn't keep having to fight the corrupted gems," Pearl said. She sighed. "We were all so young back then, and you were the youngest of us all. You shouldn't have been fighting at all. Rose didn't want that. None of us did. You were a child. You shouldn't have been here." Then she kissed the top of Onyx's head. "You haven't changed much. Why did you come to Earth with us in the first place? You were too young."

"They said I was useless. I couldn't do the things I was supposed to. Designing, blueprinting, building. So I wanted to get away from them. I heard Rose was going to some little planet with life on it and I wanted to see it. I wanted to see literally anything other than them yelling at me that I was defective." Onyx pressed herself closer to Pearl. "You wanted to send me back."

"Rose wouldn't let me. She understood why you snuck aboard. She understood that you wanted something more, that your purpose wasn't what they said it was. Rose understood. Which is why she didn't want you to fight when the rebellion started."

"I'm sorry. I messed so much up."

"No," Pearl said. "You only did what you thought was best. I remember how you fought then. From the trees, from the tops of buildings or cliffs or even the backs of other bigger gems. Your arrows helped us win many battles. You are one of the reasons why we won the war. You fought with the element of surprise."

"It wasn't good enough! I wasn't good enough." Onyx trembled a bit in Pearl's arms. "You act like it's not my fault, but it is. I wasn't good enough. I..." she bit back tears and tried to make her words come out clearer and less strained. "I should have been stronger. I should have been faster. I could have saved them."

"You did save them. Well some of them. Listen, there's something bigger going on. Something the Homeworld is trying to do that just isn't right. I can't explain it to you right now, but please understand that bubbling your friends, the shards of them, the ones that are just cracked, all of them. Saved them from a fate worse than falling in battle. You saved them from a lot of suffering."

"I don't understand," Onyx said. "Would they... would they have been any better off if I could have stopped them from falling?"

"I doubt it," Pearl said. "In the end, Rose could only save a few of us. Honestly, I'm surprised, but happy that you survived. I don't think things would have been quite the same if Rose had lost you completely. She loved us all. You were so small. We were all so small. Children caught in something too big for us. Rose took care of us. I don't think she would have been quite the same if she thought she'd caused the death of such a young gem."

"But I chose to fight?" Onyx said quickly pulling back and shaking her head. "It wouldn't have been Rose's fault if I fell."

"Then why would it be your fault that your friends fell, when they chose to fight, just as much as you did, and were in a more informed position to make that choice?" Pearl asked releasing Onyx from the hug and putting a hand on her shoulder. "If it would not have been Rose's fault if you had fallen, then understand the same applies to you and your friends."

Onyx looked down for a second as though she didn't want Pearl seeing that she was still crying. "It's not that simple. I-It'll take more than just this one time of telling me for be able to accept that as true. I... I do appreciate it though. And I will try to remember to think about it like that until I can learn to forgive myself."

"This might be a bad time to interrupt," Elsa said looking past them to Lapis who had walked in the door with some shells in her hands, but dropped them when she saw Onyx and looked really angry. "But why does Lapis look like she wants to kill you, Onyx?"


	5. Chapter 5

"Who?" Onyx asked looking to Elsa, then turned to look toward the door and squeaked then hid behind Pearl. "Don't let her hurt me. She never accepted my apology."

"Apology for what?" Pearl asked, She wasn't used to people hiding behind her, usually she was the one hiding, behind Garnet.

"That little brat is the reason I got sent here in the first place," Lapis said walking up to them, trying to calm herself down when she saw Steven and Elsa. "She couldn't just do her job. She had to run away. She had to take all the plans with her too."

"Plans? What plans?" Pearl asked.

"The told me to make plans for a ship that could fly in space, under water, in the air, and on the water. She was in charge of me," Onyx said peeking out from behind her a little. "But I couldn't do it. I didn't know anything about over half the stuff they wanted. I'm not an engineer, nor an architect. Maybe that's what they wanted me to be but that's not what I am."

"No, you'd rather spend all your time reading and daydreaming," Lapis snapped, then added a little softer, "If you wanted to leave, you could have done so without the plans and we would have just replaced you."

Onyx shook her head fiercely. "No. The 'plans' I took were blank. I had no designs. None. But if I left them there you would have never come to Earth." She looked away for a moment, then looked back. "I just had a feeling you were supposed to come to Earth too. Even if you did end up on the wrong side from me. Over half the things I 'daydreamed' about came true."

Steven hopped in between Lapis and Pearl, putting a little more distance between Lapis and Onyx. He smiled and dramatically said, "Future vision," while wiggling his fingers in front of his face.

"Future vision?" Lapis asked raising her eyebrows.

"Don't be ridiculous Steven, Onyx doesn't have future vision. Do you?" Pearl said turning to Onyx and looking very confused.

"I don't know," Onyx said looking up at Pearl while tilting her head. "What's future vision?"

Steven smiled. He remembered when Garnet explained it to him. "Garnet says it where you can see things that might happen, like how did she put it..."

"I can see options and trajectories. Time is like a river...that splits into creeks, or pools into lakes, or careens down waterfalls. I have the map, and I steer the ship," Garnet said. None of them had seen her come in but the only one who seemed surprised by her appearance was Onyx, who didn't know Garnet was prone to just showing up when she was needed.

"Yeah, that. That's future vision," Steven said.

"I can't do that," Onyx said. "What happens with me is, I just sort of see things sometimes that come true later. It's really unreliable honestly."

Garnet thought for a moment about this and decided that it was possible that it was a less mature version of future vision, considering that Onyx probably had never learned to focus on it or control it in any way. "It's a form of future vision," she said. "You might get better at using it after some time. Now, the real reason I'm here. Lapis, don't hurt Onyx. She was a child when she did what she did. She didn't mean any harm. She is not the one who put you in the mirror, please consider not blaming her for that." She put a hand on Lapis' shoulder gently but firmly.

"What mirror?" Onyx asked, but squeaked and hid behind Pearl again when Lapis glared at her.

"Lapis please," Pearl said putting her hands on her hips and looking considerably more like a mom scolding a child than either Garnet or Steven had seen before. "Do you really need to be so intimidating to her? She's just a child."

"She's like 5500 years old," Lapis countered.

"Lapis, why are you being so mean to her? This isn't like you," Steven said looking up at her.

Lapis sighed. Of course she did know that Steven and Garnet were right. But Onyx was the reason she'd ended up on Earth and being on Earth is why she ended up in that stupid mirror for so long. "I'm sorry. I know she didn't put me in... that situation. But she is the reason I ended up on Earth. And being here is the reason I ended up in the mirror. It's just hard to forget that it could have been avoided."

"I already said I was sorry that you had to chase me here," Onyx said still hiding behind Pearl. "What more do I need to do? It's not like either of us are going back to homeworld any time soon. If I did, they'd kill me. And I bet they wouldn't treat you too kindly either. They don't know the meaning of the word kind."

"I'd disagree with you, but I'd be lying," Lapis said and took a step back. Allowing Onyx room to apologize, and stop hiding. "I'm sorry for blaming you for something you didn't do. But without knowing who did put me there, I don't really know who's fault it really is. I forgive you, if you can forgive me."

"Stop glaring at me and I'll forgive you. Oooh, maybe you can teach me to swim?" Onyx said. She smiled and stepped out from behind Pearl a little.

"Elsa," Anna whispered, "We should go. It's getting late."

Elsa stepped forward and placed a hand on Onyx's shoulder. "How would you like to come back to where we're staying for the night?" she asked. She sort of hoped that Onyx would say yes.

"Well..." She looked out the nearest window and saw that it was getting dark, which meant that it was getting late and humans, especially children like Steven needed sleep. "Okay."

Elsa smiled. "We really should be going now. Anna gets really weird when she doesn't get enough sleep."

Anna would have protested but she knew it was true and simply nodded. Was it just that she was sleepy, or did Elsa blush a little when Onyx agreed to come back with them? Anna shook her head slightly, that was probably just her eyes being weird.

"Wait!" Steven said happily. "Why don't we have a sleepover?"

"A sleepover?" Onyx asked. She didn't understand the concept. She understood sleep. It was fun, plus it helped her bond with Embla. But a 'sleepover'? That was a new idea. She'd heard of oversleeping, that was generally bad.

"You know, where people come over and sleep at someone else's house for a night," Steven said with a smile.

"As nice as that sounds Steven," Elsa said. She wanted to refuse nicely. There was nothing she'd been looking forward to more than cuddling with Anna in the inn at the end of the day. "We really..."

"We'd love to," Anna interrupted, slightly glaring at Elsa.

"Excuse us for a second," Elsa said pulling Anna away from the group most of whom just looked confused. "Anna we can't. We're paying for that room in the inn, we should use it. Besides, you know I can't sleep on the floor again. I've tried."

"What if I stay and you and Onyx go bond in the inn?" Anna said. It was obvious to her that Onyx had at one point in the day wanted to get Elsa alone so they could talk and be friends.

"Why would I do that? I love you, why would I want you to be alone here?" Elsa was confused, and rightfully so. She hadn't gotten to be alone with Anna for more than a few minutes since noon and it kind of annoyed her, since the whole point of this vacation was for the two of them to get to be alone, away from all the people who wanted to hurt them or control what they do.

Anna smiled cutely. Leave it to Elsa to think she was suggesting being alone instead suggesting that Onyx might want to get to know Elsa without her hanging around. "I wouldn't be alone. I'd be having a slumber party with Steven."

"But why would you want me to go to the inn without you?" Elsa was still confused. She just wanted to spend time with Anna. Didn't Anna understand that? The main reason she'd invited Onyx was because she felt like it might be a little awkward for Onyx to stay with the crystal gems for the night when she was the reason Onyx was back.

"Elsa," Anna said seriously. "You need this chance to get to know Onyx. She needs you. Trust me. I can tell." If there was one thing Anna had never been wrong about, it was when someone needed something and what they needed. Though generally that just meant knowing exactly when to throw a chocolate bar at someone's head.

Elsa glanced over to Onyx then back to Anna. "Are you sure you don't have some kind of magic in you too?"

"Call it something more along the lines of good instincts for people," Anna said with a smile, "or maybe I'd make a good mom. Onyx needs someone who understands her. For the longest time, that was your grandmother. Now it needs to be you. Trust me, please." Onyx needed the time alone with Elsa to properly mourn the fact that she hadn't gotten to say goodbye to Embla, or at least that was Anna's theory.

Elsa nodded, wondering if Anna thought either she or Onyx might be developing a crush on the other. "I trust you." She didn't realize that Onyx hadn't gotten the chance to mourn her best friend properly, considering Onyx had only found out she died like two and a half hours ago.

"Good. Take her and get out of here, go where she can be alone with someone who understands," Anna said nodding.

"We've decided," Elsa said as she walked back over with Anna. "That Onyx and I are going back to the inn, but Anna would like to stay for the sleep over if she can."

"I was not included in making that decision," Onyx said with a shrug. "But I'll go with you anyway."

"Sorry, Onyx," Elsa said a little embarrassed. "Anna just thought it might be good if you and I got to be alone and get to know each other."

Onyx glanced at Anna who nodded. "Well, alright. That sounds like fun." She smiled and took Elsa's hand. "Show me to this inn."

Elsa smiled when Onyx took her hand. "I'd love to."

Steven took Anna's hand. "Come on I'll show you where I sleep." He started to pull her off to the loft.

Pearl smiled slightly. "Steven, am I invited to your sleepover?"

Steven stopped walking and turned around. "Of course, you're all invited. Someone tell Amethyst she's invited too. And Lion! Everyone, except Connie, she went home."

Garnet smiled. "I'll go get Amethyst, I'm sure she'd be happy to join us."

"We're gonna go now," Elsa said walking with Onyx to the door. "Good night guys."

"Goodnight," they chorused back.

Elsa walked hand in hand with Onyx towards the inn but stopped not even halfway there when she felt Onyx tug on her hand. She turned and looked at Onyx who was pointing up at the sky.

"Have you ever been curious what it's like out there?" Onyx asked turning to look up at the stars.

Elsa looked up at them as well. "As a child, I wondered if there was life on other planets. And I wondered if I somehow made it to those other places, if they'd accept me. Or if they'd try to use me the same way most people on Earth do. But I can't go to space. Humans ... Don't do space travel right now."

"Space is beautiful. Though, I'm younger than Pearl, I don't really remember it very well. I remember Homeworld, it wasn't nearly as pretty as Earth. There's no non-gem life there." Onyx frowned for a moment. "Homeworld wasn't very nice. Everything is really big and really advanced compared to Earth, the things back then were advanced compared even to what Earth has now."

"Do... Do you ever miss it?" Elsa asked stepping closer to Onyx. For just a moment, the moonlight reflecting in Onyx's eye and on her gem made both look like the entire universe was trapped in them. It was rather beautiful.

"Not really. I miss my friends. I don't miss homeworld or space. Just the gems that were there with me, who told me they cared," Onyx looked down from the sky into Elsa's eyes. "When I saved Embla from the bear, she'd told me the day before. 'It'd be pretty cool if you were as tall as me. Then we could both reach the top shelf, and people would let you have free run of the castle.' I remembered that when I retreated into my gem to heal. Now I'm as tall as she was, almost as tall as you are. But... I still feel just as small. Changing how you look on the outside doesn't change who you are on the inside."

"Do you want to be small again?" Elsa asked. She liked having a friend almost as tall as her, but Anna was almost as tall as her and that was good enough for her. She'd rather have her friend be comfortable with who she is, than tall just for the sake of being tall.

"I don't know," Onyx said. "Even being as tall as you I'm pretty small for a gem. I'm like a whole foot shorter than Lapis, and she's like almost a foot shorter than Pearl."

"But do you want people to see you like a child or like an adult?" Elsa asked. She just wanted Onyx to be comfortable.

"What do you mean?" Onyx was thoroughly confused. The gems, except Lapis, still saw her as a child. It didn't seem to her like anyone saw her as an adult. How could they? "Do you smell donuts?"

Elsa sniffed the air then looked around and smiled. "Well, we are right in front of the Big Donut, donut store. Anyway, I mean do you want people, humans. To see you as a child, or an adult? You're tall. Too tall to be a child in the eyes of humans."

Onyx frowned a little. She'd never thought about it like that. Though she did realize now that the reason Embla wanted her to be taller was so she could be seen as an adult and not restricted in her access of the castle anymore. "Can we get donuts?"

"That doesn't answer the question Onyx," Elsa said. Then shrugged. "If the store is open, we can get donuts."

Onyx smiled and jumped around excitedly. "Awesome! I love donuts." She ran over to the door of the store and smiled when she saw they were still open. "Come on Elsa."

Elsa smiled and laughed a little. "Alright, calm down." She walked over and they headed inside together.

"Welcome to the Big Donut. How can I help you?" The girl behind the counter asked. She noticed Onyx's gem eye, smiled, and added, "Are you friends of Steven?"

"We are," Elsa said. She smiled at the girl. "I'm Elsa and this is Onyx."

"Do you have chocolate ones?" Onyx asked excitedly. "Can I get chocolate ones, Elsa? Ooh with sprinkles? Is that ice cream?" Onyx ran over to the freezers and started admiring all the different types of ice cream inside.

"I'm Sadie," the girl said with a smile. "She seems really excited." Sadie looked into the case with the donuts on display and searched out the chocolate donuts with sprinkles. "How many would she like?"

"I'll get her two," Elsa said with a smile. "She's a little hyper, but it's because she's still a kid. Do you have any with blueberry filling?"

"We do, how many do you want?" Sadie said pulling out two of the ones Onyx wanted. "Didn't I see you in here yesterday with your girlfriend? The redhead who was almost as excited about donuts as Onyx is?"

"Two, and yes, I think you did. You were working with that tall boy. The one who seemed a little grumpy," Elsa said with a smile and a nod.

"That's Lars," Sadie said picking out Elsa's donuts too. "He can be a little annoying, but you get used to it."

"Elsa, can I get ice cream too?" Onyx asked staring at a single serving size container of chocolate ice cream.

"Onyx, are you planning on sleeping at all tonight?" Elsa asked with a chuckle.

Onyx pouted. "But ice cream."

"Fine, you can get ice cream too," Elsa said with a smile. "How much do I owe you?"

"Six dollars," Sadie said with a smile. "Onyx is kind of cute."

"She really is," Elsa said reaching in her pocket and getting the money to pay for it all and turning to see Onyx doing a little happy dance with her ice cream. "Such an adorable kid."

"I'm just curious," Sadie said as she handed over the bag with the donuts in it. "But if she's still a kid, why is she so tall? I mean I know Steven's gem friends are a little, odd. But isn't she a little tall to be a kid?"

"Genetics?" Elsa shrugged not really knowing how to explain it any better to Sadie, considering she didn't know how much Sadie knew about the gems. "Gems are weird."

Sadie shrugged too. "I guess that would make sense, she is shorter than most of them."

Elsa nodded. Thinking about it, the only one shorter than Onyx was Amethyst. Both of them seemed to still be children at heart. "Onyx, are you done dancing? We need to get back to the inn."

"Awww," Onyx said and stopped dancing. "But I was having fun."

"I know," Elsa said with a sympathetic smile. "But I need to sleep soon. We can come back tomorrow if you want."

Onyx smiled and ran over happily. "I'd love that."

"Have a good night guys," Sadie said as they were leaving.

Elsa smiled and turned around for a moment as Onyx walked out the door. "Thank you. You have a wonderful night yourself."

"Whoa," Anna gasped when Steven came back inside followed by Lion. "You have a real actual Lion."

"I know, isn't he awesome!" Steven said petting Lion's mane.

Anna bounced excitedly. "Can I pet him?"

Steven nodded. "Yeah. Lion likes being petted."

Anna bounced excitedly and walked over to Lion. "He won't bite me will he?" she asked holding out her hand tentatively.

Lion yawned then let himself fall forward to bump his head against Anna's hand and looked up at her with his cutest 'pet me' eyes.

Anna smiled and gently pet Lion's head. She grinned when Lion nuzzled her hand more. After a few minutes of petting Lion he moved to go lie down on Steven's bed and Anna followed. Steven had set up the sleepover area at the foot of his bed with a pile of blankets and pillows. She joined Steven and the others on the blanket. The only one who seemed confused was Lapis, who'd never been to a sleepover before.

"Who wants a slumber companion?" Steven asked, holding out his little tray with three teddy bears on it.

"Can Lion be my slumber companion?" Anna asked with a smile.

Lion looked up from the bed then moved just enough that Anna would have some room to join him.

"I think Lion wants that," Steven said with a smile.

Anna smiled and got up on the bed to curl up next to Lion. Sooner than she expected she fell asleep there.

Amethyst and Garnet both fell asleep pretty quickly too. Soon it was just Steven, Lapis and Pearl left awake.

"Lapis why don't you get some sleep too?" Steven asked as Pearl laid down to sleep. She didn't do it very often, but she felt really awkward if she was the only one not sleeping.

"Is that the inn?" Onyx asked eating the last bite of one of her donuts as they approached a rather unimpressive looking building.

"I know it doesn't look like much, but the room is nice," Elsa said with a small smile. Somehow Onyx had actually seemed to calm down once she started to eat the sugar filled treat.

"It's pretty," Onyx said admiring the color of the building though it was kind of dark out, which made it harder to tell exactly what color the building was. "I like it."

Elsa smiled and walked with Onyx into the inn. "You'll have to be quiet in here. There's probably people already sleeping."

Onyx nodded and reached into the bag for her second donut. She didn't say a word, just silently started eating the donut. They walked together past the front desk, down a small hallway and into a different hallway. Once in that second hallway, Elsa stopped walking and fished in her pocket for the key to the room she and Anna rented. Then she walked down to the door marked 22 and put the key in the lock. Onyx had stopped walking and was staring up at the painting that was hanging between two of the doors.

Elsa tried to get Onyx's attention but it didn't work, so she walked over to see what fascinated her so much.

"That's a Van Gogh painting," Elsa said which finally got Onyx's attention. "It's called Starry Night."

"I like it. I want it," Onyx said.

"I'll find you a copy somewhere," Elsa said with a smile. She looked back to the door that still had her key in the lock. "We should go in the room now though."

"Alright." Onyx nodded and followed Elsa back to the room. She smiled when she saw the two beds in the room, they both had very soft looking blankets and pillows on them. "The blankets! They're blue."

"That they are," Elsa said closing the door behind them. "Do you like?"

"I love," Onyx said walking over to one of the beds and sitting down on it. "Blue is the color of the sky, and the ocean, and Embla's eyes. It's the color of your eyes too. The color of friendship and I believe the color of freedom."

"You're really smart for a kid," Elsa said not meaning any type of insult by it.

"Children usually are smarter than adults think. I think that's why Pearl and the others are always so shocked when I say something that's true," Onyx said with a sigh and finished off her donut. "Like with the warp pad. I know it's got to be magic that makes it work, but like Pearl says it's technology. She doesn't believe me. No one ever believes me."

Elsa thought about what Anna had told her about Onyx needing someone to be there for her, and remembered the way Nani was always there for Lilo in that movie they'd watched a couple days ago. "I believe you. It's got to be magic. The warp whistle wouldn't work otherwise. It's what makes the most sense."

"You... you really believe me?" Onyx asked, not sure that Elsa wasn't just saying that to make her feel better.

"You don't seem like you're lying. You're really smart. And you're my friend. Of course I believe you. Besides, if it isn't magic then I don't think it would have worked for me." Elsa smiled and placed her bag of donuts in the little mini fridge in the room, along with what was left of Onyx's ice cream. Then she turned around and walked over to the other bed and sat down so she was facing Onyx.

"What do you think about dragons?" Onyx asked.

"What kind of dragons? There's many kinds," Elsa said hoping to encourage Onyx to talk more. She wanted to hear Onyx's opinions and ideas.

"Wanna see something really cool?" Onyx asked, her eye sparkling.

Elsa nodded in response, she wasn't sure if Onyx was attempting to distract her or not.

Onyx grinned, climbed up on the bed and got down on her hands and knees like someone pretending to be a dog. Then she shook herself a little and within seconds had shapeshifted into a black and white dragon the size of a German Sheppard.

Elsa stared at her wide eyed for a moment before saying the first thing to come across her mind. "Did that hurt?"

Dragon-Onyx shook her head. "Not at all. Shapeshifting is fun, not painful." She looked back at her wings. "Some cultures believed that dragons didn't have wings. Some believe they did. Some people believe dragons were dinosaurs that survived into the time of people by hiding in mountains or underwater. Some aren't sure dragons ever existed. What do you think?"

"I think they existed and everyone is right, except the people who think they didn't exist," Elsa said. "There's no reason to believe that with the amount of diversity life on Earth has that there wouldn't be more than one kind of dragon too. I think we wasted an opportunity having them killed off. That's no way to live."

Dragon-Onyx jumped around on the bed excitedly, "Knights in shining armor killed the one chance we had at knowing what could have been. Imagine it, everyone has a pet dragon. No one is ever bullied because who's gonna pick on someone who has a dragon? No one."

"Dragons are the coolest thing ever."

"Nope, wrong, they're the second coolest thing ever," Dragon-Onyx said shaking her head. Then she shook herself a little and shapeshifted into a girl that other than being black and white, looked almost identical to Elsa. "The coolest thing ever."

Elsa frowned for a moment then said tentatively, "I can't tell if you're being me or being Embla."

"Embla could have been your twin," Onyx said shifting back into herself and sitting on the bed cross-legged. "She was the sweetest girl I'd ever met. There wasn't a moment of time when I knew her that she didn't make me feel like... like it was all worth it. Like being here on Earth, long after all my friends were gone, was a gift not a curse. She always believed in me, even when it was something stupid or dangerous. She was a real life Wonder Woman."

"Do you want to know why she gave you up when you were trapped in your gem? How you ended up with me and Anna instead of her?" Elsa asked moving to sit beside her.

"I'd like that," Onyx said leaning against Elsa when she sat down.

"She had a dream. That I'd be the one who would get you to Rose Quartz, whether or not I knew it. She gave you up, because she knew if she didn't, your gem would never get fixed. She let go of you only so that some day you could experience the world again, even if she wasn't there to experience it with you."

"I gave her that dream," Onyx said quietly. "I'd spent so much time with her in her dreams playing with you, that one night I was just watching her play with you in the dream and I got one of those daydream things that come true sometimes. I saw you with Rose, you talked to her, and then I was there. Rose had healed my gem. She truly was sad that I'd been hurt and especially that I'd been hurt for so long. I guess, because I was sharing Embla's dream, she had the same dream as I did. I know it didn't quite come true the way I saw it but it did happen. I just wish Embla had been around to see me again, to give me a chance."

"A chance?" Elsa titled her head and wrapped an arm around Onyx to hold her close.

"A chance to say goodbye."

Elsa reached in her pocket silently and pulled out her phone, then pulled up a video on it. She held the phone in front of her and Onyx and looked to see if Onyx was looking. When she was sure that Onyx was paying attention, she pressed play.

There was a moment of blurry movement where the camera was being set up. "Alright? Can you hear me?" the woman the camera had focused on said. She looked like an older version of Elsa, though her eyes were more deep set and brown and her skin a little more tan than Elsa's.

"Of course, grammy. Go on, I'm recording it," a young Elsa's voice said. It was Embla. She was sitting on the edge of her bed.

"This is really important to me. I have to make sure that it's working," Embla said.

"It is, she can hear you. She will hear you. I promise I'll show her when I meet her," young Elsa said.

"Are you wearing her necklace?"

"Always."

"Alright. I should start at the beginning?"

"Start where ever makes the most sense to you."

"Onyx, I still remember the day I first met you. I was only three, but I remember it so well. You were the only one who thought that I could do the things I wanted to. The only one who thought that my dreams weren't just the fantasy of a toddler. I remember when I was ten and you wanted to come to school with me so bad that you followed me there and I made the teacher let you stay. We convinced so many people that day that you were my little sister. I remember the first time you fought a gem monster while I was around."

"Grammy what are you talking about? Was that some kind of game you two played?" young Elsa asked.

"You'll understand when you meet her, Elsie. I promise. I don't have long, let me say what I need to."

"Of course," young Elsa said apologetically.

"I was so scared, but you saved me. That was the first time I really understood that there was more to the world than what we learn in school. You showed me so many things. I know that when you see this, I'll already be gone. But I want you to know that I remember it all. Everything you ever told me. From the little things like that you believe in me, to the big things. I remember the names of every single one of your friends before me. All the ones you lost to the war, Agate, Moonstone, Bloodstone, Orthoclase, Beryl, Carnelian, and Chalcedony. The ones that came after, Petra, Lief, Don, Maron, Fredriche, Abaline, and me. Please Onyx, I know you understand that I can't be around as long as you can, understand that Elsa will be your friend. She'll take care of you the same way you took care of me. No one one likes to say goodbye, Onyx. I made something so that you'll never forget me. Elsa, will you do the honors? They don't want me leaving the bed. Honestly they'd probably get mad if they knew I was sitting up."

"I can do it." The camera moved back for a moment and then turned momentarily as young Elsa sat it on top of Embla's dresser. She spent a second correcting the angle of the video then walked over to the bed. More of the room could be seen now and leaning against the wall at the foot of the bed was a large painting covered with a sheet. Young Elsa smiled and gently pulled the sheet off the painting. Then she picked it up and moved it a little closer to the camera.

The painting was magnificent. In the foreground a younger Embla and a much shorter Onyx were standing side by side, holding between them Rose's flag. Behind them stood a group of men and women, Embla's old human friends, in armor made out of furs. And in the every back above them all were slightly translucent figures. Onyx's gem friends. The one in the center stood out the most, that was Bloodstone, the last to fall. She had striking red eyes and a greenish tint to both her skin and her hair.

"I'm going to have this put away for you Onyx. Somewhere special to us. The light of the night graces the place with its presence and turns all it touches into silver angels. Where on a clear night you can see from here to the ends of the galaxy if you look close enough. There in the dark you will find this. No human, other than young Elsa here could. I've shown it to her before. She let me in. She can do it again. There is where I keep the ones humans just won't understand. There you told me to. There you said, 'I love you', and there I said, 'I love you too.' There will stand this painting. Safe from people who don't understand. Safe from the world til you return to claim it. Someday Onyx, I'll see you again. Somehow. This isn't goodbye. This is, so long for now. Til we meet again. I have always, and I will always, love you." There was a moment of silence as young Elsa put the painting back against the wall and put the sheet back over it. Then she walked over to Embla and gently kissed her cheek.

"A kiss from Onyx to you, since she isn't here now but I know she would want to," young Elsa said.

"Be sure to ask Onyx how she can see things that no one else can, that's always an interesting story."

The camera beeped signaling a dying battery before young Elsa could reply. Quickly young Elsa ran over and then the video ended.

Elsa turned to look at Onyx and saw tear marks on her left cheek. Elsa smiled and gently kissed Onyx's cheek. "A kiss from Embla to you, since she isn't here now but I know she would want to."

"Thank you," Onyx said, her voice quavering. "I needed that. And the short answer is it's a combination of my future vision skill and what humans call Extra-Sensory Perception."

Elsa smiled and chuckled for a second. "So you're psychic. That explains a lot, well not really but it is fun."


	6. Chapter 6

"I'm not sure I can sleep, Steven. I've never tried before," Lapis said shyly.

"Aw that's okay Lapis. You can sleep. I promise, I got Pearl to sleep once before, I can help you sleep too," Steven said with a smile. "It's not a sleepover if you aren't sleeping."

Lapis nodded then frowned slightly. "But I don't know how to sleep."

"I can teach you," Steven said with a smile. "First, you'll want to lay down and then get nice and comfy."

Lapis raised an eyebrow but nodded. She laid down on the blanket and stretched out trying to get comfortable. After a little bit, she found she was more comfortable curling up into a little ball with her head resting on her right arm.

"Now just close your eyes, relax and don't think about anything," Steven said.

Lapis nodded and slowly closed her eyes. She soon drifted off to sleep.

Steven was the last of them to fall asleep, mostly just because he wanted to make sure the others at least attempted to sleep first.

* * *

"Do you want to talk about any of it?" Elsa asked carefully. She wasn't sure if Onyx would talk to her about it.

"What's there to say? I... You let me see her one last time. Hear her one last time. You gave me everything I could ever wish for. What more could I ask for? What more could I say? I don't want to say goodbye to her." She turned her face to the ceiling. "Embla, I remember you teaching me all the things I would never have known otherwise. Teaching me about math, teaching me about art, and about reading on Earth. You taught me the things I needed to know to seem human. How to sleep, what eating is. Donuts." Onyx sighed and sniffled a little. She didn't look at Elsa but did instead relished in the fact that Elsa's comforting grip on her had not lessened nor moved.

"You introduced me to donuts and Wonder Woman. I never understood why here on your planet they put so much emphasis on gender. I never understood it. I never will. Why are the men so much better in the eyes of the world? You showed me that girls are just as awesome here as they are other places in the universe. You showed me that I can be proud of being 'she' even if most of the time people acted like I was a 'he' just because I was smart and strong." She tried to blink away the tears from her eye but she couldn't keep them out of her voice, nor keep the feeling from making her words more strained.

"You taught me everything. You taught me how to have fun again. That I shouldn't spend all my time either fighting or mourning. That my friends wouldn't want that. You taught me. And now, now there's nothing left you can teach me. You're waiting in that place on the other side that you told me about when your mom died. You might be with my past friends, the ones I miss so much. Telling stories and watching over me." She bit her lip for a moment and took a couple deep breaths to keep from breaking down into a sob.

"Embla, I miss you. I miss you so much. But I know you wouldn't want me to obsess over it, to mourn you for too long. I'll miss you forever, but I hope one day you can welcome me into that place on the other side you talked about. I just hope they allow polymorphic sentient rock beings from outer space. For now, I'm glad you left me with Elsa. She's so much like you. I know it'll be hard, but you loved her. You loved me. I love you, and I already love her too. You did so much to make sure that I wouldn't be alone. That I wouldn't forget." Onyx took a deep breath then finished with, "But I could never in a million years forget you."

Onyx collapsed against Elsa, crying onto her shoulder. Elsa held her close and gently rubbed her back while trying to ignore the tears that were falling from her own eyes. "She still really loved you, I doubt she thought for a second that you ever would forget her."

"Did you ever meet your grandfather?" Onyx asked pulling away from Elsa's shoulder for a moment and wiping her tears away on the edge of her cloak.

Elsa thought about that. As far as she knew, Embla was never married and only had two children, her dad and her aunt. "I have not. As far as I know, no one in the family ever did. Susanne never talks about her dad and my dad Lukas talks about you, but never anyone he called dad. Just 'my mom's girlfriend,' at least I think he meant you. He never said any names."

"There was a time," Onyx said thinking back to anything she could say that would explain what little she knew about who might be Elsa's grandfather, "when she was in college, twice actually that this happened; I'd get to see her at the beginning of her fall term and not see her again until the end of spring. I'd see her in fall and she had no kid, then in June she had a kid with her. I never understood if maybe there was someone else, if there was something she didn't tell anyone. I thought for a while maybe they were adopted, but they looked so much like her when they started growing up."

"Are you saying that my grandfather was just some guy she met in college?" Elsa asked quietly.

"That's possible. It's the most likely answer," Onyx said. She didn't really think there was any other thing that could explain it.

"Most likely. Well, the only other thing I can think of is that somehow, like magic or something, you are their other parent," Elsa said thoughtfully.

"I don't think that's possible, Elsa. Gems can't have human children." Onyx wasn't even sure how people had children. She just knew it took a boy and a girl, or at least people with those sets of parts. That's what the biology book said until Embla advised her to skip over that chapter.

"Why not? Rose had Steven." Elsa was pretty sure there was no reason a gem couldn't have a child with a human, except maybe biology.

"I don't know," Onyx said quietly. "Rose gave up her physical form to bring Steven into the world. I'm still here. Besides, we never did... whatever it is that humans do to make more humans. I don't even know what it is, Embla made me skip that chapter of her biology book because she didn't think I needed to know."

"Magic, maybe it was an accident."

"Elsa, please. I know it's important to you, but I'm just a kid. You know that. I don't think I'm able to be grown up enough to be a parent."

Elsa smiled at that. "I'm not saying you need to be. I know that you aren't. That's okay. I'm just saying that it's possible you and I are related."

"Well... that would explain why you can do things that only gems can do." Onyx looked down for a second. "If it's true, does that mean I'd have to start treating you like I'm in charge of you or something?"

Elsa shook her head and chuckled. "You may have been alive longer than me, but I am the older one of us. Does that make sense?"

"You're an adult. I'm a child. That makes sense to me," Onyx said with a small smile. Then she looked around and noticed for the first time the small stuffed dragon sitting next to Elsa's pillow. Her eyes widened and she practically flew out of Elsa's arms over to the other bed and picked it up. "You have Lava!"

"Lava?" Elsa asked with a raised brow. "I didn't know it had a name."

"Lava is not an it. Lava is a they," Onyx said very seriously.

Elsa nodded just as seriously. "I'm sorry. I meant no offense. I had no idea Lava was yours."

Onyx nodded and smiled. "That's okay, it's not like Lava could have told you. Embla made them for me for Christmas one year. Hey, is it close to Christmas yet? I wanna hear the pretty songs and see the snow and eat gingerbread cookies and those sugar cookies shaped like trees."

"It's not, but I can make and control snow, and I know how to make those sugar cookies shaped like trees. If the Crystal Gems don't mind, I can make you some at their place tomorrow," Elsa said with a smile. "It's closer to Halloween actually."

The sound of excitement that came from Onyx was decidedly not human, but yet still something humans on the internet make all the time. "Halloween is my favorite holiday! Everything is spooky and everything is pumpkin and people dress up in costumes. One year I went as a dragon, perched on Embla's shoulder. People thought it was awesome. We got twice as much candy because Embla said she was trick or treating for herself and her little sister who had to stay home because she caught a cold."

"That has got to be the most adorable story I've ever heard," Elsa said with a smile. She glanced at the clock and seeing that it was almost 11, decided they needed to sleep. "Onyx, if it's alright with you it's time for bed."

Onyx had been bouncing excitedly with Lava on the bed but stopped when Elsa said that. "Okay. But can I sleep in your bed if I have bad dreams?"

Elsa smiled and nodded. "Of course you can, you don't even need to ask." She got up off the bed and walked over to the dresser where she'd put away the clothes she and Anna had packed or bought. She looked through them and picked out a pair of pajamas to wear, then looked back at Onyx who was moving over to the other bed. "Onyx do you need some pajamas or can you sleep in that?"

"Huh?" Onyx looked down at herself then chuckled. "Watch this." She concentrated for a second, then her cloak seemed to cling to her for a second. A small flash of magic later, she was wearing a white nightdress.

Elsa smiled, impressed by how easy things could be with gem magic. "That works." She quickly changed into her pajamas then smiled at Onyx. "Do you mind if I turn the light off now?"

Onyx shook her head and smiled. "Kind of hard to sleep with the light on isn't it?"

Elsa chuckled. "I guess you're right." She headed over to the light switch and flipped it off then made her way back over to the two beds and decided Onyx needed something to help her sleep, so before she laid down in her bed she stood beside Onyx's and leaned over and gently kissed her forehead. "Good night Onyx. Sleep well."

Onyx blushed a little but smiled. "Goodnight Elsa."

Elsa smiled and crawled under her own blanket.

* * *

Sometime in the night there was a moment when Anna really wished she'd decided to go with Elsa and Onyx, but that was only because when she woke up from her bad dream, the only one there was Lion. Well, that wasn't entirely accurate. Everyone else was there, but Lion was the only one awake.

Lion had woke up a little while before Anna when he felt her trembling. He actually woke her up himself, scared that the human might be malfunctioning. Steven did things like that occasionally, usually waking him up and letting him have a hug helped. Of course Lion did know that humans didn't exactly malfunction the same way machines or a cracked gem did, but sometimes their bodies or minds did something to hurt them. Lion didn't like it when that happened to Steven, and he liked it even less from this new friend of Steven's.

Lion didn't profess to know everything about humans, but he knew they liked hugs. That much was clear from how many times a day Steven hugged him when he was around not doing his own thing. So he wasn't shocked in the least when Anna pressed herself close to him, though he was surprised that she was crying. He didn't know what Anna could have possibly been dreaming about that made her cry, but he wasn't about to let anything else make her sad, not if he could help it. He gently nuzzled the top of her head.

After a few moments of snuggling close to Lion, Anna fell back asleep. It was a much calmer sleep with no bad dreams interrupting it. Lion, however, stayed awake for a while longer.

* * *

Elsa woke up sometime early in the morning, around four am probably. She couldn't read the clock in the dark and the light from her phone always hurt her eyes if she tried to check the time as soon as she woke up. For a moment she wasn't sure what woke her up. She couldn't hear anything at all in the room and Anna was at Steven's sleepover so it wasn't like Anna had woken her up again. Still, she was concerned about why she was awake. However when she moved to stretch, she figured it out.

Onyx had moved over to Elsa's bed about an hour after Elsa had fallen asleep. She may have accidentally pinned Elsa's arm to the bed though. She woke up when she felt Elsa move and gently moved so that Elsa could move her arm. "Sorry," she whispered.

Elsa smiled and rolled over a little to give Onyx a little more room on the bed and pulled her close. "It's alright. Did you have a bad dream?"

"No... I'm just not used to sleeping alone anymore. I haven't had to do that in years, like close to 100 years," Onyx said quietly. She snuggled against Elsa, "I know I'm just going to have to get used to it."

Elsa shook her head and kissed her forehead. "You shouldn't have to get used to that. I know I won't always be able to share a bed with you. But if you need it, I could buy a stuffed animal for you that is almost as big as you, so that you don't have to feel like you sleep alone."

Onyx thought about that. "Can they be made warm? I like sleeping in human's beds because humans are warm."

"I suppose there are ways to make them warm," Elsa said quietly. She kissed her forehead again. "Are you sure you didn't have a bad dream?"

Onyx nodded and closed her eyes. "I am. I did not. I just couldn't sleep alone."

Elsa smiled and closed her eyes as well. "That's okay. Sometimes I can't sleep alone either. Anna's tried to be there for me as much as she could but sometimes that just wasn't possible. I promise I'll do my best to always be here for you."

But Onyx didn't respond, she'd already fallen back asleep.

* * *

"Lion, hey Lion. Lion. Lion. Lion." Steven stood at the edge of the bed trying to get Lion's attention to see if he wanted any breakfast. The gems were all still asleep.

Lion looked up and sort of growled at Steven, afraid that he might wake up Anna. Anna deserved to sleep, plus when Lion glanced out the window it wasn't even sunrise yet.

"Lion are you hungry?" Steven asked quietly. He didn't want to wake anyone up.

Lion simply just put his head back down and ignored Steven.

"Oh well. More for me," Steven said with a shrug. Then he headed down to the kitchen. Maybe if he could do it without making too much noise, he could surprise them all with a sunrise Together Breakfast.

He pulled a couple packs of toaster waffles out of the freezer and smiled. This was going to be the best together breakfast ever, and this time it wouldn't try to kill them.

* * *

 _Onyx please! Come back. I need you!_

 _Embla? No this can't be right. You... You're gone._

 _Onyx, can't you come back? Can't you hear me? Lukas is only 14, he's not going to understand why you're gone. Please can't you come back?_

 _Embla, I don't understand. How are you talking to me? Wait... Only 14? That's not right. I remember. This is a memory, isn't it? I remember this. I will come back Embla._

 _Rose can fix you. Right? I hope she comes back to check on you again soon._

"Onyx."

 _Wait who's that? That's Elsa, but how? She shouldn't be in here._

"Onyx wake up. It's time for breakfast."

 _Wait what? But..._ "I only just fell asleep," Onyx mumbled pulled out of her dreamlike memory by the thought of breakfast, which could mean more donuts.

"Like three hours ago," Elsa said with a smile sitting on the edge of the bed. She'd changed into one of her more geeky t-shirts, one she was sure Onyx would appreciate. A Wonder Woman t-shirt she'd bought. She was also in a pair of jean shorts and tennis shoes.

Onyx sat up, Lava was stuck in the neck opening of her nightgown. She blinked herself into a more awake state then noticed what Elsa was wearing and gasped excitedly. "That's Wonder Woman!"

"It is," Elsa chuckled. "I thought you might like to know she's one of my favorites too."

Onyx smiled excitedly. "I used to collect Wonder Woman comics. I'd always buy two copies of each one. One I'd read and one I'd keep in its plastic."

"I know where they are," Elsa said teasingly. She'd often opened that place up for Embla. That place in the castle that only a gem can access. She'd never seen the paintings stored there, Onyx wasn't wrong about that, but she had been in there.

"Really?" Onyx asked curiously.

"That place she mentioned in the video. There's a lot of stuff stored there that she wanted to make she no one but you could touch," Elsa said.

Onyx thought about that. Embla had said that Elsa could open that part of the castle, but the only way she could do that is the same way she'd be able to use the warp pad. Yes, it all made sense, even if she didn't understand it. "Elsa, you are part gem."

"Well, I sort of figured it would turn out to be something like that at this point," Elsa said, not really thinking there could be a different explanation. "The real question becomes how exactly did that happen. But don't try to answer that right now. Anna called like half an hour ago inviting us to a picnic to have what she called 'together breakfast.' We probably shouldn't be late to that. It's a sunrise picnic and sunrise in twenty minutes."

Onyx stretched and stood up. She placed Lava on the bed then changed her clothes back to her usual outfit. "Alright let's go. This should be fun."

They walked together through town and made it to the picnic about five minutes late.

There was a scream that was distinctly Steven's as they approached the top of the hill of the temple. "Why do my together breakfasts always end with something trying to kill us?"

* * *

 **A/N I'd appreciate someone telling me if they like the lines added or not, because I have the scenes separated like that in my original document, but the way I did it keeps getting removed when I upload it here, and I want to know if anyone really cares.**


	7. Chapter 7

Elsa and Onyx sprinted the last little bit to the top of the hill and saw the others trying to defend the picnic from seagulls. "Steven, I'm sure the seagulls don't want to kill you, they're just hungry."

"They're evil!" Steven exclaimed as one swooped at his head. He waved his arms at it to try to make it fly off, but it just attacked his arms instead. "Aaaahhhh that was not the intended result!" Steven cried as he began trying to run away from it by running in circles.

Elsa sighed and took a deep breath then carefully focused on what she wanted to do. She whistled sharply and the birds all looked at her then decided she was food. They came at her in a flurry of squawking screeches and feathers, but they left in a flurry of snowflakes, terrified by the sudden change of temperature.

"Elsa, what did you do to them?" Anna asked as things settled down and they went back to dividing up the together breakfast.

"I just figured they didn't like the cold and gave them and isolated snow shower," Elsa said as she walked over and sat down. Onyx followed her and sat down next to her.

One lone seagull circled above them for a moment until Elsa glared at it. It squawked in fear and flew away quickly.

"Did you sleep well?" Anna asked smiling at Elsa and Onyx.

"Yeah, we slept pretty well. What about you?" Elsa said with a smile.

Anna was about to answer when she felt something nudge her from behind. She turned to see what it was.

Lion had decided to join them for the picnic and he wanted some of her food. He nudged her again and gave her cute sad lion eyes to let her know he was hungry.

"Are you hungry Lion?" she asked him. He nudged her again in response. "Steven, does Lion eat bacon?"

Steven shrugged. "He eats pizza. And fish."

Lion nudged Anna again and opened his mouth.

Elsa wasn't sure what to say about this. Lions shouldn't be pink, but she did suppose this wasn't the strangest thing she'd seen in the last two days. She watched as Anna fed Lion some of her bacon and eggs.

Lion looked over at Elsa when he was done eating. He yawned and turned away from them to go sit on the edge of the hill.

"This is going to be the stupidest question I've asked today," Onyx said as she watched Lion walk away from Anna. "But does Lion talk?"

Pearl shook her head. "He's just a lion. Why would he be able to talk?"

Onyx shrugged. She had no idea why she wondered that. He just seemed more intelligent than he should be. She didn't voice that thought though. "Talking animals are interesting."

"And a pink lion isn't?" Pearl asked.

"Not more so than any other color lion," Onyx said with a shrug. "Wait. You know what is interesting?" She pointed at Amethyst. "Her."

Amethyst looked up from her second helping of breakfast for a second and shook her head a little. "Not really kid. Just who are you anyway?"

"I'm Onyx. Who're you?" Onyx asked with a smile. She was trying her best to be polite and proper but in all honesty she wanted to know if the fellow small gem would play games with her.

"I'm Amethyst. Why haven't I met you before?"

"No idea, maybe because I've been stuck in my gem for the last 60 years, maybe you're younger than me. Do you like playing games?"

Amethyst smiled. "I love games. What kind of game? Ooh wait, let's play Steven tag!"

Onyx tilted her head. "What's Steven tag?"

Pearl groaned but Amethyst was excited. "It's like tag, but when Steven tags you, you have to shapeshift into Steven."

Onyx thought about that for a moment. Then smiled and nodded. "That sounds like fun."

They waited for Steven to finish his breakfast and then declared the game of Steven tag had officially begun. Garnet was the first one tagged, since she was sitting right next to Steven.

Elsa munched on her breakfast in silence watching as Steven chased around the gems that would play with him. Then when she thought Pearl wasn't listening said quietly to Anna, "So it turns out through some weird magic thing that Onyx and I are technically related. Like technically, my dad at the very least is her kid."

Anna nearly choked on her eggs. "Wait what?"

Elsa rubbed her back gently. "Onyx told me everything she knew about my dad and his sister being born. That being she was with Embla until Embla went off to college, then didn't see her again for nearly ten months. When Embla came back, she had a kid with her. Onyx said that happened twice."

"It doesn't make sense," Anna said picking up one of the napkins and wiping lips clean. "Couldn't it have just been some random dude she met in college?"

"I didn't claim that it did make sense, but if I wasn't part gem, then I wouldn't be able to do half the things I can," Elsa pointed out.

"There's a lot we just don't know about your world," Pearl said, slightly startling both Elsa and Anna. "I'm not going to say that it isn't possible for what you say to be true. I'm going to say that it's highly unlikely that the woman you were talking to at that castle..."

"My aunt Susanne."

"Didn't already know that."

Elsa frowned and thought about that for a moment. That would make sense. "Onyx how old..."

Onyx came running by with Steven chasing her. "Your dad was 14 when I poofed into my gem," she called out.

"Both my dad and Susanne would have known," Elsa said. "I don't know why they kept it from me, my life would have been a lot easier if they'd just told me. I think Embla wanted me to know. I believe that's the real reason she took such an interest in me all the time."

"Susanne seemed to know more about Gems than any other human I've ever met," Pearl said.

Anna kept quiet while Pearl and Elsa were talking. But something was bothering her about this. Pearl acted like she knew everything about the gems on Earth, but she was shocked when it was revealed that Onyx was still alive. In all her life Anna had never met any humans with gem inspired names, but before now she'd never thought it was weird that in every administration of their homeland there was someone named Jade, and only ever referred to as Jade. There had to be something weird going on there.

If perhaps Jade wasn't human, and Elsa wasn't quite human either, that would explain why the government wanted to control her so badly. That would explain quite a lot actually.

"Anna? Anna what are you thinking?" Elsa asked snapping her fingers in front of Anna's face, confused. "You've got that look on your face. The one you get when you're about to come up with another conspiracy theory."

"A gem controls our government at the highest level," Anna said in a more serious voice than she usually used for her theories.

"What? Be serious Anna," Elsa said,

"I am serious. Elsa, I believe that there is a gem in charge back at home. It makes sense. There's that one member of the government, that's been in every administration for as long as anyone can remember."

Pearl and Elsa exchanged a confused look, but decided to let Anna say her theory. They were incredibly curious. Though Elsa was prepared to give back the standard response of 'they're related but not the same person' that everyone had always told her.

"They call her Jade. Normally I'm not one to point out weird names, well I mean I am but her name is weird in that it's so normal for a person. It's a gem. Jade is a gem. She's got to be. That's the only logical reason she could have been an active part of our government for the last 300 years at the very least. Plus, if she is a gem, and she knows about Onyx, then she probably knows that you're part gem."

Elsa was suddenly less willing to spout off the thing she'd always been told was a fact. There was actual logic behind Anna's words, not just logic that was applied to things that didn't have an explanation.

"That would explain why they wanted to do all those weird experiments on you when you were little. The experiments that never happened. The ones that caused your parents to fight the government. Elsa, please believe me. I'm not just making things up to make myself feel better about not knowing something this time. This is a real thing, a real problem. If Jade is a gem and knows that you're part gem, that would explain why the government was so insistent on turning you into a weapon. The only thing it doesn't explain is the dance lessons."

"I hate dancing," Elsa said as though that was the only thing in the world that mattered in that whole spiel.

"Fusion," Pearl gasped. "That's what the dance lessons were for. But you shouldn't be able to fuse. You don't have a gem of your own."

"What does dancing have to do with fusion?" Elsa asked. "I mean like, Garnet explained what fusion is very basically yesterday."

"And what did she say it was?" Pearl asked.

"She said, 'It means two or more gems give up their physical forms temporarily and combine to form another, stronger gem.'" Elsa closed her eyes and nodded to signal that was the end of what Garnet had told her. "What does dancing have to do with that?"

"Dancing helps," Pearl said.

"Helps what?" Anna asked curious.

"Helps... uhh... synchronize..."

"Pearl, do you even know?"

"Of course I know," Pearl said slightly blushing the way someone did when a parent asks them if they knew who ate the cookies but doesn't want to tell the truth, because then they'd get in trouble.

"Then just tell us," Anna said.

"It's complicated. Fusion is complicated." Pearl didn't see why they didn't realize that she wasn't being honest. She thought it was pretty obvious.

Elsa tried the diplomatic approach. "If you're afraid we won't be able to understand it because we're just human, don't worry about that. I'm part gem, and Anna, she's really smart."

"And I've seen all the scifi movies. And read everything I can about space, science, and lots of other things too."

Pearl didn't look convinced in the slightest but sighed and nodded. How long would it take them to realize she didn't know anything about fusion in an exploratory fashion? "To understand fusion, you first need to understand what gems are." When neither Elsa nor Anna said anything in response to that, she continued. "Gems are, in their simplest forms, just gems. Our bodies are actually projections created by our gems. Like a hologram, but with mass."

"If your bodies are holograms, projections, then your consciousness is in your gem. That makes your gem like your brain. When you fuse, you become the projection of not one gem, but two or more," Elsa said.

"Right," Pearl said with a nod. This gave her a little bit of hope, maybe she does know something about it after all. It just might take a third party to connect the dots. "A fusion gem, like Opal, is an amalgam of the combined physical and magical properties of two gems. In her case, Amethyst and I."

"I get that," Anna said. "Just one question. What's amalgam mean?"

"Mixture or blend," Pearl said. "In order to fuse two gems have to sync. I'm not sure how to explain that in human terms."

"They have to be in sync with each other?" Elsa said with a thoughtful nod. "It sounds like a certain degree of harmony and unison must be achieved. Like how on stage in a play all the actors must work together to form a whole working cast or the show is off, wrong."

"And that's what the dancing is for. It's the easiest way, usually, for two gems to become in sync with each other," Pearl said. The thought did cross her mind that it might be possible for Elsa to fuse with a gem, considering Steven and Connie can fuse despite Connie not having a gem.

Elsa nodded thoughtfully. If it was just the easiest way then that did mean there were other ways. She wasn't sure she wanted to ask about those other ways though. It seemed so alien, which it was, but that didn't mean she wasn't capable of understanding it. When you're a child, everything is alien. If children can learn to understand alien concepts then she didn't see why she shouldn't be able to as well. After all, she was part alien.

"But why?" Anna asked. "Why is it the easiest way?"

"Anna no," Elsa said quickly. "Some things are better left alone."

"But I want to know," Anna whined.

"Anna, this is an extremely alien concept. Do you really want to know? I'm not sure there's an answer that humans are capable of understanding," Elsa said.

"Honestly," Anna said. "If humans are capable as a whole of understanding astrophysics, the concept of God, normal physics, math, languages, quantum physics, psychology, and all those other complex fields of study, then I don't see why we can't learn to understand fusion."

"While that's all said and good Anna-"

"I just don't know," Pearl said interrupting Elsa's thought of why it just might not be possible for humans to understand something they couldn't apply to themselves in any way. "I don't like admitting that, but I don't. I have wondered myself why it is the easiest way, and perhaps the real answer is that maybe it isn't. Fusion is very complicated. Garnet knows more about it than I do, but I'm not sure she even knows the real answer."

"Hi Pearl," Connie said walking up to them at the top of the hill. She'd only arrived a few minutes ago and saw Lion and Pearl at the top of the hill from down on the beach. She was rather confused about the number of Stevens down there, but assumed it was some game that Pearl could explain. When she got to them, she noticed Elsa and Anna, and Lapis lying on her back a little ways away watching the clouds. "Hi Elsa, Hi Anna. Hi Lapis."

Elsa and Anna turned momentarily and smiled at Connie. Lapis just sort of lazily waved, not looking away from the clouds.

"What exactly is going on with there being four Stevens on the beach?" Connie asked then paused and noted the look on Pearl's face. "Am I interrupting something?"

Pearl shook her head. "Good morning Connie. You're not interrupting. I was just attempting to explain the connection between fusion and dancing. I'm not doing a very good job at it."

"If it matters, I think it's fun," Connie said sitting down beside Elsa. "At least it was when Steven and I fused."

Elsa regarded her carefully then said, "I'm not sure if it matters. But if Steven is part gem and can fuse with a human, then I don't see any reason why I can't fuse with a gem. I mean other than I don't dance."

"Maybe you just need someone you trust," Connie said. She smiled at them. "I only dance with Steven. Dancing in front of other people makes me really nervous, I feel like they're all staring at me and judging me, even if they're not. But it's not like that with Steven. I doubt he has a judgmental bone in his entire body."

"I don't know, I just never liked dancing," Elsa said honestly. She didn't see any reason to lie. She almost didn't want to find out if she could fuse with a gem. There wasn't a gem here that she felt that comfortable with, especially not since no one seemed to be exactly sure what fusion is other than complicated.

"Connie, is that a violin case on your back?" Anna asked trying to change the subject off dancing which was making Elsa visibly uncomfortable.

"Huh? Oh yeah, it is. I was going to show Steven some of the new songs I learned but he's busy doing whatever it is he's doing down on the beach with three other Stevens," Connie said removing the case from her back and putting it on her lap.

"He's playing Steven tag," Pearl said. "It's like regular tag but when you get tagged, you have to shapeshift into Steven. Since Elsa and Anna can't do that and Lapis and I prefer not to, he's playing with Amethyst, Garnet and Onyx."

"Yeah, and if he's playing tag, then I don't want to interrupt that to show him my new songs," Connie said with a smile.

"Why don't you show us then?" Anna asked with a smile. "Pearl do you or one of the other gems have a violin I could borrow? I could play with you Connie. If you want."

"I have a violin you can use, Anna. Let me go get it." Pearl stood up and headed down to the temple.

"Anna, didn't you bring your violin with you?" Elsa asked as Connie got hers out of the case and started warming up.

"Yes, but it's in the inn," Anna said. She smiled at Connie. "So what songs have you learned?"

"Well my mom wanted me to learn Tchaikovsky's Waltz of the flowers," Connie said with a smile. "And I've mostly got that down. My teacher suggested Musetta's Waltz from La Boheme. My dad wants me to learn Beethoven. He wasn't very specific about that."

"That's all pretty impressive," Anna said with a grin. "Let's start with something simple though. For a warm up."

Connie grinned and started playing a simple melody. Soon Pearl came back with her violin for Anna. She made sure that the violin was tuned properly, then she joined Connie by listening to what Connie was playing, then playing it back to her. Connie played the simple song twice for Anna then they played it once together.

Steven chased the gems from the beach up to the top of the hill and smiled. "Connie's here!" He stopped chasing them and went to go find his ukulele.

"Was that Steven?" Lapis asked sitting up. "He seems excite- Why do you three all look like Steven?"

"Lapis," Amethyst said slightly jumping. "I forgot you were here. We were playing Steven tag."

"Aww, I like Steven tag," Lapis said standing up and walking over to them. "So what're we doing today?"

The three Steven's shapeshifted back to themselves.

"Connie and Anna want to play music for us," Elsa said. "If you want to listen."

Anna and Connie stood and moved to be in front of the group.

"That sounds pretty wonderful," Lapis said taking a seat next to Elsa, where Anna had been sitting. Onyx took the seat on the other side where Connie had been sitting.

"So what are you going to play for us?" Onyx asked.

Garnet and Amethyst sat down behind Elsa, Onyx, and Lapis. Pearl moved to sit with them. Pretty soon, Steven came running back with his ukulele and sat down next to Connie with a smile.

Connie was looking slightly nervous now, not having expected to play for all the gems. She'd only expected Steven to want to hear her new songs. Though she did suppose this would be a good chance to practice playing in front of other people. Plus, she wasn't alone. Anna was playing with her. She took a calming deep breath and picked up her bow, smiling.

"I'm mostly learning classical music, people like Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, other old dead guys," Connie said with a smile. "What kind of song would you like?"

"Hmm..." Onyx thought about that before Elsa blurted out her request.

"Do you know the Star Wars theme song?"

"Elsa, you are aware that's mostly trumpets right?" Anna said with a chuckle.

Elsa smiled and chuckled. "It was worth a try."

"I don't know that one, but I do know-" She paused for a moment to find the right beat and tempo in her head then began playing "The Phantom of the Opera". She didn't sing though, but Anna, after realizing what she was playing, joined in both on the violin and with her voice.

When they were done everyone, even Steven who'd never heard of Phantom of the Opera before, started clapping.

"Wonderful," Pearl said. "Do you know any more from musicals? I've always found human theater to be fascinating, even if I don't always understand the shows."

"Well, I know one," Anna said with a small smile. "Connie, do you know Les Miserables?"

Connie nodded.

"I know that one too," Pearl said.

"We all do," Garnet added.

"You made us go see it, P," Amethyst said.

Onyx and Lapis exchanged a confused look with Steven but didn't argue the fact that neither of them had ever heard of it. Well, that wasn't exactly true. Onyx had heard of the book. But she had no idea that there was a musical.

"Let's do it," Anna said. She started playing the opening measures of "Do You Hear The People Sing". Connie soon joined in and there was a moment pause before Elsa began singing.

"Do you hear the people sing? Singing the song of angry men. It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again. When the beating of your heart echoes the beating of the drums. There is a life about to start when tomorrow comes."

Then Pearl joined, "Will you join in our crusade? Who will be strong and stand with me? Beyond the barricade, is there a world you long to see?"

Garnet joined next, "Then join in the fight that will give you the right to be free!"

Pearl, Amethyst, Garnet and Elsa together sang the next part, "Do you hear the people sing? Singing the song of angry men. It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again. When the beating of your heart echoes the beating of the drums. There is a life about to start when tomorrow comes."

Amethyst sang alone for the next verse, "Will you give all you can give so that our banner may advance? Some will fall and some will live. Will you stand up and take your chance? The blood of the martyrs will water the meadows of France!"

Everyone sang the end verse, even Onyx, Lapis, and Steven, "Do you hear the people sing? Singing the song of angry men. It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again. When the beating of your heart echoes the beating of the drums. There is a life about to start when tomorrow comes!"

When it was done, everyone was clapping and laughing. They'd all gotten caught in the excitement of that song.

Steven leaned over and whispered to Connie that he'd learned a new song too. She listened to his idea and smiled. Together they began playing when the clapping died away. A few notes in, Elsa shook her head and whispered harshly to Anna, 'you'd better not sing. I always cry when you do.'

Connie smiled and hummed the melody a moment before she began singing it, much to Elsa's dismay. "Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high. There's a land that I heard of, once in a lullaby. Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true. Some day I'll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far behind me. Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above chimney tops, that's where you'll find me. Somewhere over the rainbow, bluebirds fly. Birds fly over the rainbow, why then, oh why can't I? Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true."

Elsa put her face in her hands to try to hide the fact that the song always, without fail, brought her to tears. She didn't need to hide though, Onyx was crying too. She'd seen the movie when it first came out.

"Anything else you'd like to hear?" Connie asked with a smile.

"Well, do you know any opera music?" Onyx asked.

Connie thought about that. "Maybe? You're talking like Carmen? Like La Boheme? Right?"

Onyx nodded. "Yes, like those. Or ballet music, both are very pretty."

Connie smiled and nodded. "I have a couple of both that I've been working on. I don't know how well I'll play them, but I've been working on Musetta's Waltz from La Boheme, and a few of Tchaikovsky's songs from Swan Lake and Nutcracker."

"I'd like to hear something from The Nutcracker," Onyx said then paused and added, "if you don't mind."

Connie nodded. "It's not a problem. I offered after all. How about The Waltz of the Flowers?"

"I love that one," Onyx said with a sad smile. Connie began playing what she knew of the piece. After a few moments, Onyx pulled Elsa up by her arm and led her to behind the others. "Elsa, would you please dance with me?"

Elsa shook her head furiously. "I do not dance."

"Please, Elsa, just this once. This was our song. Embla and I. Please share this dance with me, I'd really appreciate it if you did."

Elsa frowned, she really didn't want to deny Onyx this dance that seemed to mean so much to her, but still. "I don't dance."

Onyx sighed and nodded. "Well, okay."

"Only this once?" Elsa asked.

"Only this once," Onyx confirmed. "Please Elsa, I promise it'll only be this one time. I just, I feel like I'd be able to..."

"It's okay, I understand." Elsa gently took Onyx's hand. "I bet you're used to having the lead, aren't you?"

"What?" Onyx asked sort of confused. She hadn't really expected Elsa to agree to dance.

"It's a waltz you want, right? Who leads?" Elsa asked.

Onyx smiled and moved to take over the lead and together they waltzed. The world slowly faded out and for them there was nothing but them and the music. Elsa let Onyx have the lead, dancing with her eyes closed, lost in the feeling. She said she hated dancing and for the most part she did, but right now all she really felt was Onyx's happiness. About halfway through the piece, Onyx and Elsa were moving practically as one, neither noticing when Onyx's gem began to glow. However, everyone else noticed it just fine.

The song ended abruptly when Connie stopped playing as she watched what was happening. Onyx and Elsa danced a beautiful waltz together, but then Onyx's gem started glowing and one twirl out and back later they were one.

One would imagine a fusion between a human and a gem tends to look rather human, like Stevonnie. Well as might be expected from such a fusion, they weren't much taller than Garnet. For them, that was what felt comfortable together. The most non-human thing about this particular fusion, aside from being a fusion, was that they only had one eye. The other was Onyx's gem. Their skin was black as the night with hundreds of little white patches all over the place. Some were shaped like stars, others like snowflakes, and some didn't really look like anything. There was one larger than the rest on their forehead, half obscured by their bangs. One would even think that patch was in the perfect place to have been meant to be Elsa's gem, had she had one of her own.

As could be imagined, several things were going through the mind of the now seemingly unified fusion gem standing before the others before they ever spoke. The thoughts, more like a conversation between Elsa and Onyx went as follows:

 _"And that's why I don't dance, Onyx. Who knows what could happen. What did happen?"_

 _"I think we're a fusion now. This is interesting."_

 _"Interesting? Interesting. Of all the words, interesting?"_

 _"Intriguing? What do you want from me? The only other gem I ever fused with has been dead a long time now."_

 _"I'm sorry. So if we're a fusion, what or rather who are we?"_

That's when they spoke for the first time, rather happily at the discovery of who they happen to be. "I'm Snowflake Obsidian. You know, this isn't half bad. Being together." They smiled at the others who mostly looked surprised.

Steven was the one who responded first, happily like always. "Giant Woman!" He set his ukulele on the ground then jumped up and ran over to them. He ran around their legs. "So cool."

Snowflake Obsidian happened to agree with Steven on that one, it was pretty cool. Not just because Elsa was always pretty cool. There was so much they could feel, so much they could see. So much they could do. Together.

 _"What are we wearing? Did our clothes fuse too, Onyx?"_

 _"I think so. I think we're wearing my cape. That feels like my cape on our back."_

 _"And your boots."_

 _"Hmm, I think we're wearing jeans? I don't know. A t-shirt."_

 _"So, we're wearing clothes?"_

 _"Well we're not naked. That's for sure."_

 _"Wait, do you see that on our arm?"_

 _"The white patches?"_

 _"Some of them look like stars. Interesting thing about stars..."_

"Steven, have you ever wondered just how much things in the universe are actually connected?" they asked.

Steven stopped running around and stood in front of them. "What do you mean?"

"Everything is connected, Steven. Through patterns. One of them, is right there on your shirt. The star."

Steven looked down at his shirt. "The star?"

They nodded. "The star. You can notice it somewhat in a few of my white patches," they said holding their arm out for Steven to get a closer look.

"Your skin is very pretty," Steven said with a smile. "Some of the patches do look like stars, some look like snowflakes."

"The star is a universal pattern," they said. "It shows up in most of nature; the starfish, the leaves of the Maple tree, more types of flowers than I can count. Snowflakes have a special pattern of their own. Fractals. Lot's of things in nature share fractal formations with snowflakes; seashells, other flowers, vines, many types of vines grow in a fractal formation, leaves, tree branches, birds' feathers, specifically I'm thinking peacocks, nerve cells, canyons, lightning bolts. Fractals are probably one of the most common things in nature."

"That's cool and all but have you considered this," Amethyst said with a smile. "You're a fusion now."

"Yes, I have considered that," they said also smiling. "I've also considered that I'm now at least three feet taller than you."

"But have you considered trying to summon your weapon?" Amethyst asked with a grin. She was especially happy that Garnet wasn't telling her to stop messing with the new fusion.

"That I had not considered," they said tapping their chin.

 _"Should we try?"_

 _"Not if we don't have to. We'd look ridiculous if we can't do it."_

 _"I agree."_

"But I have considered it now, and I'd prefer not to do that if I don't need to," they said reasonably.

"Amethyst, have you considered how awesome fractals are?" Steven asked grinning. "Science is awesome!"

Connie and Pearl both stifled a giggle at how cute it was that Steven was fascinated by pretty much everything. Lapis however seemed thoroughly confused.

"Is Elsa like, part gem or something? How can she possibly fuse with anyone?" It was a question that Amethyst had thought about for maybe like three seconds.

"She is," Snowflake said. "The technicalities of that are not important. She can fuse, though I am not sure if she can fuse with anyone other than Onyx. They are compatible, and related."

"Okay, that's kind of weird," Lapis said. "Someone please tell me that I'm not wrong. That's weird."

Steven frowned. It didn't seem weird to him at all.

"Lapis, just because it's different doesn't mean it's weird. Onyx and Elsa share a bond, that much we can see. They may have only met yesterday but their bond is strong. Most likely this is because of them being related," Garnet said. "I support them, however weird you might think their fusion is."

"It's not their fusion I think is weird," Lapis said in defense of herself. "I think Snowflake Obsidian is pretty nice. It's that they're related but both still here that I think is weird. If it could happen to them, why couldn't it have happened to Rose Quartz?"

"We just don't know," Pearl said.

"It's because Onyx did not carry the children," Snowflake said.

 _"Are we sure that's it?"_

 _"Snowflake can see into the past with more clarity than which you can see into the future."_

 _"Is that because you have photographic memory?"_

 _"I don't know. Snowflake is more than we are."_

"But how could..." Lapis started to say but then stopped realizing that Steven and Connie were probably much too young for whatever the explanation was behind that.

"Elsa's grandmother wished it be so," Snowflake said.

"Are you saying..."

"It was magic. That is the explanation. You can accept it as true or live in doubt of it and search for another explanation, but magic is the reason Elsa's family after her grandmother exists," Snowflake said with a small nod.

The gems considered this. They had no way of knowing if what Snowflake was saying was true or if she just believed it was.

"Wait guys, I bet the internet knows something about this," Steven said searching his pocket for his phone.

"You left it on your nightstand," Snowflake said.

"Thanks!" Steven said running to go get it.

"How did you know that?" Pearl asked when Steven was out of earshot. "Neither Elsa nor Onyx were at the sleepover. Neither of them should have known where Steven left his phone."

"I know a lot of things, even things I was not around for. I can see them as clearly as Garnet can see the possible outcomes of the futures," Snowflake said. "Like the opposite of future vision."

"That would make sense with Elsa's memory and Onyx's power's immaturity," Garnet said.

"If you can see into the past," Lapis said. "Maybe you could tell me who placed me in the mirror."

Snowflake thought about that independent of Elsa and Onyx. Onyx was all for it if they knew, Elsa knew better than to meddle in those things. And Snowflake themself? Snowflake knew who put her in the mirror, but wasn't about to open that can of worms at all. "I'm afraid I cannot."

Lapis frown slightly then shrugged. "It was worth a try. Can you tell me this, do you know who placed me in the mirror?"

Snowflake then said, "I cannot say that I do or do not know who did or did not put you in that place for reasons that may or may not rewrite the way we do or do not think about history. In short, I can't tell you anything about it at all."

"What I understood from that," Pearl said with a small nod, "is that you can't tell us about the past because our understanding the past would change how we think about it and affect the future."

Snowflake raised an eyebrow. "I do not believe that is what I said. What I said has nothing to do with the future. Knowing that one piece of history in its truth out of context of the bigger picture would change how you see the past and everyone involved in the event. It would adversely affect the present."

"Adversely affect the present, but not necessarily the future," Garnet said. "We are not ready for what would happen."

"I'm not sure what exactly that means right now," Lapis said. She looked around absentmindedly then pointed at Lion. "When did Rose get Lion?"

"Shortly after meeting Greg," Snowflake said. "She got Lion shortly after meeting Greg. Lion was tasked with tracking down lost gems when he got big."

Lion looked over at them and yawned before laying back down. Lion didn't care one bit about what the gems and Connie were doing. He looked back up for a moment when he heard a little wrrrrring sound from down below the cliff. Curious, he stood up and looked over. A moment later Peridot appeared rising up from down below with Steven clinging to her back.

"Guys, I caught a Peridot!" he said with a chuckle.

"Get off me you little clod!" Peridot hissed, trying to kick him off with her leg that still had a foot. "And give me back my other foot!"

"Peridot?" Lapis said as the other gems, except Snowflake, summoned their weapons. "Peridot, perhaps we can work this out somehow. The Crystal Gems aren't so bad once you get used to them."

Peridot stopped attempting to fly away but didn't stop trying to kick Steven off of her. "Oh great, you're with the Crystal Clods now? What happened to Jasper?"

"Jasper's gone," Lapis said, not a complete lie, not the complete truth either though.

"Yellow Diamond is going to kill me. Jasper was one of her favorites," Peridot said. Then when Steven started attempting to climb onto her head to force her down, reached behind her with her non helicopter hand and tried to grab him. "Stop it clod or we'll both fall."

"Steven," Snowflake said warningly, "stop trying to climb up any more. I might not have future vision but I can tell you're gonna fall."

Peridot snickered for a moment but then stopped and tilted her head. "Wait, who are you? And what's with the overgrown furball?"

"Hey!" Steven said pulling on Peridot's hair. "Lion is not overgrown!"

Snowflake tilted their head. "My name is Snowflake Obsidian."

Internally, Peridot wondered why the Crystal Clods didn't attack her. Maybe they were afraid of accidentally hurting Steven. She also wondered who the two humans were. But then she didn't really care about either of those things. She wanted her foot back and she wanted to go home.

"Give me back my other foot clods, and I'll give you back your precious Steven in one piece," Peridot said.

"Peridot, do you really think getting your foot back is going to help you get home?" Lapis said, taking a step closer to her.

"I don't care if it does or not. Have you ever tried walking on one foot? It's not easy," Peridot said. "Yellow Diamond will come save me."

"Honestly, if Yellow Diamond really cared about this, mission she certainly wouldn't have sent you," Lapis said with a small smug smile.

"Wow rude," Peridot said. "Yellow Diamond programmed me for this mission. I sent her a distress call. She'll come get me. Or send someone else to."

"Peridot, you sent that distress call like a month ago. It does not take that long to get from homeworld to here. If she was coming she would have been here by now. She probably didn't even get your message," Garnet said.

"Wait!" Steven cried out. Then he carefully crawled up a tiny bit more and put his chin on Peridot's shoulder so he could look at the other gems. "What do you mean Yellow Diamond programmed you for this mission?"

The Crystal Gems exchanged worried looks.

"Do you really not know anything about Homeworld? What do you clods tell this boy?" Peridot said, lowering herself to ground. Mostly just because her arm was starting to ache.

"Nothing," Pearl said quickly.

"I can tell," Peridot sneered. "I'm not the only Peridot on homeworld. Pearl isn't the only Pearl out there. Though she's the only defective one that has been reformed."

"She's reformed lots of times," Steven said in an attempt at defending Pearl.

"That's not what I mean. Reformed. Remade," Peridot said.

The Crystal Gems wanted to do something to stop Peridot from telling Steven these things they'd tried to keep from him because he wasn't ready for the information, but there was nothing they could do. It wasn't like Peridot would listen if they told her to stop.

"That sounds bad," Steven said.

"I'm sure it is," Peridot said. "I was made for this mission by Yellow Diamond."

"What happens if you go back? Now that your mission is done?"

Peridot considered that. "I suppose Yellow Diamond would give me another assignment. But thanks to you clods, I'm stuck here. I don't know anything about this stupid planet and I'm stuck here. And with only one foot!"

Lapis smiled. "Well, I guess you could say, Peridot, that you've got a leg up."

Steven chuckled. "Good one, Lapis."

"Peridot," Snowflake said. "I know we got off on the wrong foot, but perhaps you'd consider joining us instead. At the very least until it becomes clear to you whether or not Yellow Diamond's forces are going to rescue you. There's more at stake here than you know. You're not the only Homeworld gem on Earth who isn't with us."

"Wait, who's the other gem?" Peridot asked. "The intelligence said there weren't gems on Earth and my informant," she glared at Lapis, "only informed me of those three clods."

"Her name is Jade and she works for White Diamond."

Pearl and Garnet both gasped and even Peridot seemed a little frightened by that.

Lapis however didn't seem to care at all. She shrugged and said, "What, like that's any worse than working for Yellow Diamond?"

"Of course it's worse," Peridot said. "What are you, stupid? White Diamond is the top. There's no one above her. No one works for her either, except Yellow Diamond and Blue Diamond, wherever she went. And apparently Jade. I have no idea who Jade is, but if they work for White Diamond and are here, you can bet that White Diamond is keeping an eye on them."

"Alright, but I still don't understand why that's a problem," Lapis said.

"Hey Peridot," Steven said still with his head on her shoulder. "Is Yellow Diamond like your mom?"

"Yellow Diamond is my boss. My Mission Operations Manager," Peridot said. "Will you get off me."

"Nope, not getting off," Steven said, then spelling it out in his head added, "Are you aware that the acronym for Mission Operations Manager is MOM? Yellow Diamond really is your mom."

Snowflake walked over and stood behind Peridot for a moment before lifting Steven up by the back of his shirt with one hand and lifting Peridot by the back of her body suit with the other. "Steven, don't bully Peridot. From what I understand, if she really wanted to she could kill you. Generally we don't bully the ones that can kill us." They set Steven down.

"Let me go you overgrown clod," Peridot hissed, trying to wiggle out of Snowflake's grip.

Snowflake just lifted Peridot a little more off the ground. "What did I just tell Steven?"

"Not to bully me?" Peridot said wiggling more.

"We don't bully the ones that can kill us," Snowflake said. "It wouldn't take much effort for me to pop that gem off your head."

Anna looked at Connie nervously. They were the only two completely human beings present in the situation but neither moved to end up with any involvement in it. It was one thing to be friends with the gems, another to attempt to interfere when unstoppable force met an immovable object. At the very basics of this problem were three facts they both understood perfectly. Peridot was not on Earth's side, Jade worked for what was essentially the Homeworld's President or Emperor, and Snowflake was not joking at all when she gave that threat to Peridot.

"You wouldn't dare," Peridot hissed back.

"You feel like testing that theory?" Snowflake asked.

"Lapis do something! Don't let her pop my gem off!" Peridot practically shrieked, scared that perhaps they really were serious.

Anna decided that that moment was when she should remind them all that she and Connie were still there, considering that Steven looked like he was about to cry. "Snowflake, don't hurt Peridot."

Snowflake considered those words for a moment. They turned to look to Garnet, Pearl and Amethyst for what to do.

"Peridot, I'll give you a choice," Garnet said. "Join us and we'll give you back your foot, or don't join us and you won't be needing your foot back anytime soon."

"What are you going to do if I don't? Let her pop my gem off?" Peridot asked her voice slightly shaking. "Listen clods, you might be able to regenerate if someone were to pop your gem away from your form, but I'm not sure I could. I've never had to before, and I wasn't exactly designed for a mission that involved getting injured."

"Whether or not you can regenerate wouldn't matter much from inside a bubble," Pearl said.

"You're a gem," Garnet said. "There's not much of a reason you shouldn't be able to regenerate. But yes, that's what we'll do."

"If it matters Peridot, I think we can be friends," Steven said. "Please just give us a chance."

"Alright! Fine, I'll join you clods, but only until reinforcements from Homeworld get here. And I'm only doing this because I'm tired of running from you," Peridot said then added under her breath, "and I'm kind of tired of being alone." She thought none of them heard that, but Lapis, Steven, and Snowflake heard just fine.

Lapis and Snowflake agreed, through a single look, that they wouldn't mention what she said at all as so not to embarrass her while Steven gently took Peridot's floaty fingers in his hand as Snowflake lowered her to the ground. "You won't be alone friend, you'll have us," he whispered.

Peridot looked down at Steven and nodded slightly to acknowledge what he said, but otherwise she did not respond to it. Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl completely expected Peridot to try to make a break for it as soon as Snowflake let go the back of her body suit, Peridot however did not. She just stood there rather awkwardly.

"So, can I like, have my foot back now please?" she asked. She didn't have any plans to run anymore. Partly because she didn't want to find out whether or not she could regenerate, and partly because constantly being on the run was very lonely and driving her batty.

Pearl wasn't quite convinced that Peridot wasn't going to run yet, but went to go get her foot anyway. When she brought it back and gave it to Peridot, she, Garnet, and Amethyst were fully prepared to fight to keep her from running off again. However, Peridot just replaced her foot and then looked at them and said, "So what exactly do you clods do all day?"

Steven smiled. "We go on missions or just hang around here. I like to go to the arcade, or the Big Donut, or hang out with Connie. We do lots of things."

"I see," Peridot said. "What were you doing before I crashed the party?"

"Connie and Anna," Steven said pointing at them, "and I were playing music for everyone."

"Music?" Peridot said eyebrows furrowed in concentration thinking about it. "Music. Singing, instruments, that sort of thing?"

"Yeah." Steven nodded excitedly. "Exactly that sort of thing."

"I'd like to hear some Earth music," Peridot said, her attempt at trying to show interest in the same thing the others did. Perhaps she could learn to belong.

Steven smiled and led Peridot over to where they'd been sitting before. "Sit here, and we'll play for you."

Peridot nodded. Steven didn't seem quite so bad to her. None of the gems were trying to hurt her since she wasn't trying to run away. Maybe this wouldn't be all that bad. Perhaps she might even learn something useful while with them. At worst, she'd just be stuck with some annoying gems and Steven for a while.

The other gems put away their weapons and sat back down behind Peridot. Lapis decided to sit beside her. Anna and Connie exchanged a look but picked up the violins and began playing again, this time Connie began Moonlight Sonata and Anna picked up almost immediately. Snowflake was the only one who didn't seem to be listening, they were now sitting beside Lion petting him.

 _"Why aren't we paying attention to the music?"_

 _"Peridot. Snowflake can see her on the homeworld. Onyx, she's younger than you. She tried to kill the other gems, because she didn't know any better. I think she needs a better mom than Yellow Diamond."_

 _"Yes, she does, but none of the gems will listen to us about that."_

 _"She's learning a lot, really quickly here on Earth. We just need to make sure she learns the right things. Lapis is learning to love the Earth because of Steven. Peridot can learn a lot from us all."_

 _"One thing. Why doesn't Lapis remember who she was before?"_

 _"That has nothing to do with Peridot."_

 _"But I'm curious. You mentioned Lapis. Now I wanna know why she can't remember. Snowflake sees her before. Snowflake sees a very powerful gem. Snowflake sees a leader. Why can't she remember that? I knew her back then. She was such a powerful leader. I don't understand."_

 _"Amnesia."_

 _"But..."_

 _"Selective Amnesia. She can remember some things but not others."_

 _"She remembers me. But she doesn't remember why she came after me herself."_

 _"Why did she?"_

 _"She didn't want me getting hurt."_

 _"Is she like your mom or something?"_

 _"Only in the same way that Yellow Diamond is Peridot's mom."_

 _"She sure didn't act like she's your mom."_

 _"What, your mom never chased you halfway across the galaxy to keep someone else from killing you?"_

 _"My mom never called me defective, or a brat. That was always other people."_

 _"Lapis doesn't remember me being her responsibility, not in the same way I actually was. She only called me defective when other gems were present. She didn't want them thinking she was going soft, like Rose."_

 _"Why? What would happen?"_

 _"She'd have lost her position of authority and probably been branded either a weakling or a traitor."_

 _"Position of authority?"_

 _"That's what I said."_

 _"But what do you mean? Just who exactly was Lapis before?"_

 _"Blue Diamond."_


	8. Chapter 8

_"Just how many diamonds are there?"_

 _"There used to be four. Rose lost her diamond status and was branded a traitor. Lapis doesn't remember being a diamond, but still has that position even if she doesn't know it. Yellow Diamond and White Diamond still exist and are most likely still the same gems."_

 _"You know, that does make sense, even if it is kind of hard for me to believe."_

 _"Why is it hard to believe?"_

 _"Lapis went back to Homeworld at one point after being let out of the mirror. Wouldn't she have figured out then that she was blue diamond?"_

 _"She doesn't quite look the same as she did then. I'm not sure homeworld would have recognized her."_

 _"How long are we going to stay fused?"_

 _"Why, what's wrong? Isn't it nice being together?"_

 _"Yeah, but I'm a human..."_

 _"And?"_

 _"I have human things I have to do."_

 _"Oh."_

Snowflake glowed a little for a moment, then Onyx and Elsa split apart. Onyx was left petting Lion while Elsa went over to the lighthouse to find a restroom. Peridot didn't even notice that Snowflake was a fusion, or unfused until after Anna and Connie had played through three songs and she looked to see if they were enjoying it too.

"Wait a moment," Peridot said. "What happened to Snowflake Obsidian?"

Everyone turned to look when Peridot asked that and most of them seemed slightly shocked that only Onyx was sitting there by Lion.

"It appears that Snowflake Obsidian is no longer fused," Garnet said.

"Wait, she was a fusion?" Peridot asked.

"Snowflake is a fusion, yes," Onyx said from beside Lion. "And Snowflake is a they, not a she."

"Alright," Peridot said with a nod. "I'll try to remember that. I don't understand though. Why fuse if it isn't necessary?"

"It wasn't intentional," Onyx said.

That majorly confused poor Peridot. Everything she'd ever been taught about fusion was that it was disgraceful. A tactic solely to make gems stronger, and like Jasper said, a cheap tactic at that. Because of that teaching about fusion on Homeworld, no Homeworld gems really ever trusted one another enough to even attempt fusion. Peridot opened her mouth to respond but closed it for a second, thinking, then after a moment spoke, "How can you trust someone so much that you'd be so relaxed around them as to accidentally fuse with them?"

Onyx stared at her for a moment, not really sure what to say to that. Surely Peridot had someone she trusted. She had to, didn't everyone?

Peridot didn't understand the silence that had befallen the Crystal Gems. They seemed really shocked that she would ask that, like there was no way in the world that there wouldn't be people they trusted that much. It was kind of unnerving for poor Peridot. She almost regretted asking.

"It takes a lot of time and effort on both participants' parts to trust someone enough to fuse with them on accident," Onyx said. "And a lot of patience. You have to not only trust them with every fiber of your being, you also have to be comfortable with them. There are other ways to fuse right, Garnet?"

"There are many ways and many reasons to fuse," Garnet said. "Accidentally, for strength, for strategy, for love. Many reasons."

None of them had noticed when Elsa came back from being gone, since they were all looking at Onyx.

Elsa put a hand on top of Peridot's mass of hair. "So you're Peridot?"

Peridot looked up then fell over out of shock, "The human touched me!"

"Peridot relax," Steven said. "Elsa isn't going to hurt you."

"No, I won't. But the Earth itself will," Elsa said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Peridot asked.

Before Elsa could answer though, Anna jumped up and covered Elsa's mouth with her hand for a moment. "Elsa," she whispered harshly. "If you even think about telling Peridot about the chemical properties of the nonliving kind of her and how it becomes unstable in the Earth's atmosphere, I'm going back to Arendelle."

"Domh goff biff," Elsa mumbled around her hand. "I wonn telfer."

Anna looked a little skeptical, being unable to tell if Elsa was saying that she 'won't' tell her of if she 'want's to tell her, but she removed her hand anyway.

"Earth itself is just kind of dangerous for everyone. We make do though," Elsa said. "It's really not all that much more dangerous than any other planet, I would think. I mean other than the planet out there somewhere that possibly rains glass, or lava."

"The planet that rains glass isn't so bad itself," Pearl said. "As long as you've got a proper umbrella."

Elsa thought about that for a second. "No human made umbrella could stand up to that I don't think."

Peridot did not seem quite convinced that Earth being 'dangerous to everyone' was the real reason Elsa had said Earth would hurt her. "If Earth is so dangerous, why do you live here?"

"I was born here?" Elsa said it was more a question than anything else.

"But you could leave if you wanted to, couldn't you?" Peridot asked. "Humans aren't just stuck here on this planet forever are they?"

"Well, several humans, some monkeys, some flies, a dog, and some food did make it into space. And some of those humans made it to the moon. We've sent robots to Mars and Pluto and beyond. Some day humans will be able to leave this planet. But I'm not sure we'll like what we find out there," Elsa said.

"I don't know," Pearl said with a wistful smile. "It's pretty beautiful out there in some places."

"There's also aliens with unknown intentions that would probably want us dead," Elsa said.

"Does she mean the other gems?" Steven whispered to Connie.

"I think so," Connie whispered back. "They are dangerous when they want to be."

Steven nodded thoughtfully. "Maybe the other gems would think higher of humans if we could make it into space and travel around."

"I'm not so sure Steven," Pearl said. "The other gems aren't like us."

"They might take pity on you but they wouldn't think any greater of you," Lapis said. "Humans need things to survive that the very nature of gem production kills. To them that makes you weak, a lesser species."

Steven thought about that. There had to be some way to convince the other gems out beyond Earth that humans weren't inherently less than them. Then he thought for a moment about how there was another gem on Earth. "I wonder why that other gem didn't try restarting the Kindergarten herself."

"That's illegal," Peridot said. "Everything to do with Earth's Kindergarten is illegal."

"Then why were you messing around with it?" Pearl asked.

"Yellow Diamond's orders," Peridot said. "I don't question them."

For a moment they were all silent trying to think of something to say next. Onyx was still sitting by Lion, just petting him. He seemed to be enjoying that. Onyx couldn't really join in on the conversation about other gems, she'd been alone too long. She couldn't join in about the Kindergarten either. She'd fought Kindergarten gems in the war, that's all she knew about it. For a moment she thought back to all the friends she'd lost in the war, both human and gem alike. Something struck her like getting hit in the face by a pole or sign because you didn't duck quick enough while you were running. "I fought Jasper during the war!"

"Good for you?" Peridot said. "Was that information necessary?"

"Did you beat her?" Steven asked.

"I shot her in the gem with one of my arrows," Onyx said. "But that didn't do anything other than distract her." She smiled for a second then said, "My friend Bloodstone beat her though, when she was distracted. I'm not sure how she managed to make the retreat with other gems, I guess it was because Bloodstone didn't damage her gem, just sort of flung it off the battlefield. See, Bloodstone didn't want to stoop to Jasper's level. Jasper liked literally crushing the gems she defeated. Bloodstone didn't want to do that."

"Is any of that relevant?" Peridot asked.

"Lighten up loser, you're here to stay. You might as well get used to things like this. She's always been that way," Lapis said then paused and added, "I think."

"I'm not sure, I just remembered that for some reason. I usually don't like to think back on anything, it makes me sad, but this feels necessary to know for some reason," Onyx said thoughtfully. "Jasper isn't crushed, is she?"

"No," Steven replied. "We'd never crush another gem! Right, guys?"

"Ehh, yeah. Right. We'd never crush another gem," Pearl said.

Garnet and Amethyst just exchanged a slightly guilty, slightly confused, slightly worried look. Neither of them thought it was a very good idea to tell that lie to Steven, and neither of them thought it was a good idea for Pearl of all of them to be the one to tell it.

Peridot almost pointed out how much of an obvious lie that statement was but thought better of it when she remembered that she had to live with them now.

For a moment, no one spoke. It seemed like everyone was waiting for someone else to say the next thing, but at the same time no one wanted to be the one to say it.

"Pearl, are you telling me the truth or just what you think I need to hear?" Steven asked. He recognized her tone and the look on her face. But he didn't want to just straight up tell her that he knew she was lying.

"I uhh..."

"Just tell him the truth Pearl," Garnet said. "Steven is a Crystal gem. He deserves to know the truth."

"But he's just a child," Pearl countered.

"A child that has saved your life multiple times," Garnet said. "Steven is a member of this team. If you can't trust him enough to tell him the truth, there will end up being problems. You need to trust him, else he will learn not to trust what you say to him."

"We have crushed gems in the past," Pearl said reluctantly. "Please try to understand Steven, that was thousands of years ago, during the war."

"We don't do that anymore, Steven, unless we are given no other option," Garnet said. "Bubbling them is usually a better option. More kind. It's what your mother preferred."

"You wouldn't have crushed Jasper, would you?" Steven asked.

"Then maybe, now no," Garnet said.

"Good. Jasper might be mean, possibly even evil, but we shouldn't kill her for that," Steven said. "Even evil deserves better."

Garnet nodded. "Someday you will make a great leader."

"Yeah, but no, Jasper deserved a hell of a lot worse butt-kicking than what you guys gave her," Lapis said. "You went easy on her."

"We still beat her, and she is still bubbled," Pearl said.

"Doesn't mean she didn't deserve worse," Lapis said.

"Even if she did deserve worse, she also deserved what she got by extension," Pearl said.

"Guys, stop arguing," Steven said stepping between the two. "It doesn't matter now. She's bubbled. She can't fight us anymore, and we're not going to fight her now. The really important thing is what Peridot said. If the Kindergarten is illegal now, Homeworld probably didn't want her coming back and being able to talk about it to people who don't need to know."

"Wait, what?" Peridot gasped unable to comprehend that maybe she wasn't supposed to make it off this planet alive.

"I don't think they intended you leave this planet," Steven said.

"Did you come here in a ship?" Anna asked.

"Yes," Peridot said without really even acknowledging the question.

"I think they did intend you leave, but I don't think they intended the mission take more than a couple Earth days," Anna said.

"Anna, what makes you so sure of that?" Elsa asked. "Doesn't your knowledge of aliens come from sci fi movies?"

"Actually only the theories come from scifi, the knowledge comes from the top secret government files that Susanne keeps on her computer," Anna said then gasped and added, "I shouldn't have said that."

"Why would Susanne keep ... you know what, I'm not sure I want the answer," Elsa said.

Onyx looked at Elsa for a moment then said, "Hey, whatever happened to Hilda and Lukas?"

"My dad and his older sister?" Elsa asked. "Hilda, I think lives in Keystone now, where she went to University. No one knows what happened to Lukas, he and my mom vanished when I was only 10."

"I wonder if Hilda remembers me," Onyx said offhandedly, "Also Susanne works for the government."

"Hilda's like almost 80 now," Elsa said.

"And you're what, like 30?" Onyx asked.

"What no, I'm 23," Elsa said. "Coincidentally the same age as some of Hilda's grandchildren."

"I need a new purpose now," Peridot said quietly. "I can't leave, they're not coming back for me. I completed the mission they gave me, now I need a new one."

Everyone turned and looked at her. They hadn't been expecting that. They'd actually been expecting her to get mad and say that Steven was lying.

"I don't know what I could do though," she continued. "All your tech is simply archaic."

"Then, improve it," Onyx said. "If you want it better, you can make it so. Can't you?"

"That's a great idea actually," Pearl said. "And while you're doing that, you could teach us to use the improved versions."

Peridot thought about that. "Yes. It seems I have a new purpose, but perhaps in exchange, could one of you teach me to make music?"

Steven nodded. "We can do that."

Anna leaned over and whispered to Elsa, "computer music."

"Yeah, that's right!" Elsa gasped. "Peridot, humans learned how to make music with our computers. I bet that would be easier for you to learn."

"Humans also learned to make computer programs and such. Peridot, if you learn what the humans know before you start making improvements to things, maybe that would help you out," Anna said with a smile.

Peridot nodded. "That sounds useful."

"It will be," Anna said with a smile. "I promise."

"So what now?" Onyx asked.

Garnet smiled, "Pearl, Amethyst and I have a mission."

"We do?" Pearl asked.

"Yes," Garnet said leaving no room for questioning at the moment.

"Can I come with you?" Steven asked.

"No. Steven, I need you to stay here and keep an eye on things," Garnet said.

Steven smiled. "I can do that!"

Garnet stopped up with Amethyst and Pearl following close by and headed down to the temple. When they were out of hearing range, Pearl asked a question, "What exactly is our mission?"

"Someone is watching everything Elsa does, we're going to find out who and why," Garnet said.

"How do you know for sure?" Pearl asked. "That someone's watching her, I mean."

"Heightened perception," Garnet said. "Once Peridot figures out human technology, we need to convince her to look at Elsa's phone."

"Do you think she knows she's being watched?" Pearl asked.

Garnet shrugged.

"Anna, think fast, what's the most important thing you can remember about the gem war for Earth?" Elsa said when the Garnet and the other two were gone.

"Despite Rose's army nearly being wiped out completely, her side still considered it a victory," Anna said. "What does it matter? You got some kind of idea in your head?"

Elsa didn't answer that. "Peridot, what does Homeworld say about the war for Earth?"

"Not sure, it wasn't relevant for me to have that information. But considering that, I didn't know about the Crystal Gems and that I was told Earth is an abandoned Gem Colony, probably that we won," Peridot said.

"Jasper called it the 'First war'," Lapis said. "Implying that there was more than one."

"If the Kindergarten, whatever that is, is illegal, and Peridot was sent to do something there," Elsa said. "With the thought in mind that homeworld either believes gems no longer exist on Earth or that Rose controls this planet, it's possible then that messing with the Kindergarten or even just coming to Earth in the first place could be construed as an act of war."

"The First War for Earth," Steven said. "Because by trying to keep Peridot off Earth in the first place, we started The Second War, that's why Jasper was involved."

"What does any of this have to do with anything?" Anna asked. "It scares me when you talk like this Elsa, last time you did you almost killed someone."

"Because there's a reason for everything, Anna. There's a reason that of all the places in the world we could have gone for vacation, we came here. There's a reason that Steven found us on the beach, a reason he saw me use my powers, a reason that I have that painting of Lapis on my phone, a reason that the Crystal Gems trust you and me, a reason that I ended up going back to the castle, a reason that Onyx is with us here, a reason that my aunt has access to 'top secret government files' on her computer. There's a reason, Anna it didn't just happen by accident."

"Elsa, I'm supposed to be the conspiracy theorist. What are you driving at?"

"Someone wanted us to be here. Someone wants us to do something. Someone, or something, lead us to this place," Elsa said. "Anna, what are we even doing in Beach City? We don't even have passports."

"It was Susanne's idea that we come here," Anna said. "Remember?"

"Susanne. Susanne who pretty much said 'we were going to use you as a weapon to kill a monster'. Susanne with the secret government files on her computer. Susanne with the inexplicable knowledge of the gems. Susanne who is not part gem. She's too young. Susanne who said 'we' like it wasn't just her. Susanne who tricked me. Susanne who..."

"Who gave you your phone," Anna added.

"Peridot, how fast could you learn to tamper with human technology?" Elsa asked.

"I can probably learn fast, I was designed for technology," Peridot said. "What do you need done?"

"I think it's possible that this," she pulled her phone out of her pocket, "is being monitored from an outside source."

"You want me to make it so that it isn't?"

"I want you to turn it against them," Elsa said.

"What?"

"They're watching us. I don't want that. Let's make it so that they end up seeing and hearing nothing but some really stupid video or something when they try to spy," Elsa said. "I am done being their toy."

"Elsa," Anna said. "Don't you think they'd notice that?"

"That's the idea," Elsa said. "I want them to notice."

Connie wasn't so sure it was a good idea to toy with the government of a nation like that, but she was just a human child and it wasn't like they'd listen to her.

"We're going to find out exactly what's going on and we are going to stop it. We're going to Nancy Drew this damn mystery and we are not going to back down. Are you with me Anna?" Elsa said.

"Of course I'm with you, I just don't think it's a good idea to do what you're doing," Anna said.

"Peridot, you could make it so their spy works against them, couldn't you?" Lapis asked. "A double agent in electronic form?"

Connie grabbed Steven by the hand and pulled him over to Lion and Onyx. "There's a part of the bigger picture I feel that they're missing," she whispered.

"Jade?" Steven whispered back.

"Exactly. But it's not just her. You said it yourself, trying to stop Peridot from coming here to mess with the Kindergarten was enough to start a second war for Earth," Connie said. "If that's true, there might be bigger problems here than one gem controlling a human country."

"I'm not prepared to fight a war Connie," Steven said. "I don't think I have that in me."

"Me either, but I will fight by your side if it comes to that," Connie said with a smile. "Jam Buddies for life."

"Actually," Onyx said. "I could teach you two tiny ones how to fight without actually getting in the middle of the fight. Have either of you ever considered learning archery before?"

"I learned how to sword fight from Pearl, I don't see why I couldn't learn archery from you," Connie said.

"If you're learning, I want to learn too," Steven said.

"Elsa!" Onyx shouted. "I need money."

Elsa stopped in her contemplating of how exactly to go about taking down this threat to her freedom and looked at Onyx confused. "Why?"

"To buy Connie and Steven each a bow and some arrows," Onyx said.

"Absolutely not," Elsa said. "Sword fighting is one thing, but archery is another. I'm not even sure I have that much money on me. If you want to teach them archery, start by teaching them how to make their own bows."

Anna gently swatted Elsa's arm. "Don't be rude Elsa, she wants to teach them a way to fight that keeps them out of range and possibly even out of sight."

"I'm not made of money though. Tutoring kids in math, history, art, and science doesn't exactly make me a whole lot of money and good bows are expensive," Elsa said.

"I bet Amethyst has a bow in her room," Steven said.

"I am not going in her room when she's not here," Onyx said. "That's rude. I'll teach you archery some other time."

Steven nodded, "That's okay. I'm sure there's plenty of other things we can do."

Peridot tampered with the phone for a while then shook her head. "I'm going to need more than just the tiny box to fix the tiny box. Turn it off, keep it off. They can't watch you when it's off. Lapis or Steven, one of you come with me. I'm going to go find what I need to solve this problem."

"Steven," Lapis said. "Peridot and I are going now, we'll be back."

"Don't break anything, I have enough trouble when Garnet or Amethyst break things," Steven said.

"Take Anna with you," Elsa said. "She knows more about human tech than either of you."

Peridot nodded, knowing that Elsa was probably right, then she left with Lapis and Anna to find the things she needed to fix the problem.

When they were gone, Elsa sat down on the grass and Lion walked over to lay beside her. He plopped down and nuzzled against her leg. Steven, Connie, and Onyx followed and sat down beside Elsa on the side opposite Lion.

Elsa glanced over to the musical instruments laying on the ground a little ways away. "You might want to put your violin away Connie."

Connie looked over at it and gasped. "You're right." Then she got up and walked over, putting it back in its case carefully. "Elsa, can you play any instruments?"

"Flute," Elsa said with a small smile. "I didn't bring it with me though. I can also play violin and piano. I sing too."

Connie smiled, picked up Pearl's violin, and walked back. "Would you like to play?" she asked, holding Pearl's violin up.

Elsa shook her head. "I only learned so Anna wouldn't have to play alone, I'm no good by myself."

Connie nodded and sat down. "That's okay," she said sitting the violin down carefully. "Would you like to talk?"

"About what?" Elsa asked. She wasn't trying to be mean to the kids, she just was really upset over the whole Susanne thing.

Connie thought about that. They could try to get her to talk about what was bothering her, but that probably wouldn't help much. "I know. Why don't you tell us how you met Anna? And how you started dating her? I mean, if that's not too personal."

"It's a long story," Elsa said.

"We like long stories, don't we Steven?" Connie said.

Steven nodded.

"It all started when I was three years old..."


End file.
